


superstring

by blueparacosm



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Comedy, Dimension Travel, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Humor, M/M, Psuedoscience, but also not established relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-02-09 13:32:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18639109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueparacosm/pseuds/blueparacosm
Summary: During an Alpha eclipse, Bellamy Blake is transported to the year 2019 in an alternate universe, where he finds himself sacrificially playing the role of John Murphy's dedicated and definitely-of-this-universe boyfriend, so as to heroically preserve the balance of all things space and time. Bellamy's double, unwillingly swapped into a harsh new environment, has a spectacularly worse time.





	1. ergodic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an infinite universe containing multiverses realizing all initial conditions, an identical copy of oneself among these conditions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey its jen have another long and complicated murphamy fic where i cram as much domestic bullshit in as i can

When the rift started to close on Bellamy he thought hysterically and very briefly that his legs might end up in the year 2280, and everything from the waist up would be left lying helplessly on its back like a baking tortoise on the hot pavement, as a car hurtled toward him at some great amount of miles an hour, leaving him splattered across 2019 if an awful yellow election yard sign had anything honest to say for itself.

Unfortunately, the fast-approaching automobile was undeterred by the giant purple wormhole spitting out an entire human man on the double lines and the rift shrank, and shrank, and shrank, and Bellamy couldn’t feel his legs enough to kick backwards in time. 

   The freckled, curly-haired man staring back at him took care enough to raise the little flag on the little metal box on the little wooden post at the edge of his little green lawn before the violet tear ripped the world open beneath him and he, in perfect contrast, was eaten alive.

 

§

 

All the inter-dimensional travel bullshit started the moment Bellamy’s morning rounds went on five minutes too long on a very, _very_ pre-scheduled eclipse day, and he was forced to make a mad dash toward the nearest secured building as an eclipse-toxin junkie entered into hot, murderous pursuit, complete with a very pointy knife.

In the sky of Sanctum rolled two suns that, when at a rendezvous point, effectively halved the amount of ultraviolet rays colliding with the blood orange planet, and coaxed open the buds and shyly-folded leaves on red-tinted flora and set free their toxins that boasted a non-exhaustive list of side-effects such as: dilated pupils, headache, dry mouth, confusion, staggering, and urinary retention. Inform your doctor if you are opposed to experiencing paranoia, delirium, and hallucinations. Do not take if you experience any absolutely ungovernable bloodlust.

He threw himself through the door to Nova’s workshop and flung his back up against the shuddering iron, sliding the deadbolts into place with haste as a frustrated scream sounded from behind it and his pursuer presumably slunk off with their little dagger, still clean and mourning the loss of stupid meaty Bellamy’s stupid meaty flesh.

“You’re lucky we saw you coming through the periscope or we wouldn’t have unlocked the door in time. One day you’re going to procrastinate just long enough for one of those poor suckers to get a couple good chunks out of you and grill up little Bellamy-burgers out of 'em.”

   Bellamy sunk down to the floor and took a moment to compose himself, catching his breath between his knees as Raven stared down at him, judging and arrogant in place of letting it be known she cares whether or not he’s diced and dried into Bellamy-bits and sprinkled over some eclipse-psycho’s baked potato.

“You really should be more careful on eclipse days, Bellamy!” another familiar, candy-sweet voice called, and Bellamy flicked his gaze up to be harassed by a too-close set of safety goggles as Nova, Raven’s nut job scientist friend and long-suffering anti-cult citizen of Sanctum, leaned over him and ruffled his hair. He smacked their hand away. Recent attempts on his life tended to make Bellamy averse to touch and generally grouchy. “Now you’ll be stuck in the lab with Raven and me for a whole two days!”

   “Hooray,” Raven and Bellamy monotoned in harmony, Bellamy knowing he’d have to hear about science stuff and pretend to be interested at length, and Raven knowing she’d have to hear Bellamy whine about science stuff and pretend to be sympathetic at length, for two long days as bodies thumped against the red ground outside like hailstones.

It was then that Nova shuffled out of his line of sight in their slippers and revealed a contraption Bellamy had never even imagined before, and though he loathed to inquire about anything science, his eyes widened just enough at the glowing violet film spanning from the floor to the top of an archway to spur the crazed physicist into an excited explanation that had no chance of being concise.

“It’s a portal.”

Bellamy was pleasantly surprised by their brevity. Bellamy also tended to never to be happy for long.

“Hm, I suppose I should give you a _how_ to munch on with your _what_ ,” Nova decided, pushing their goggles up their face and consequently shoving their ash blonde bangs up into a wild halo over their head.

   “I’m full,” Bellamy tried, a little desperately and going wholly unheard by the mad scientist as they prepared to get much further down than the brass tacks about the stupid portal, much to Raven’s amusement from the corner of the dark lab.

“See, during the eclipse the amount of ultraviolet rays colliding with the planet’s gravitational field is reduced by forty percent—“ Nova looked to Raven with a thumb pressed to their chin.

   “Possibly fifty percent,” Raven appended.

   “Possibly fifty percent,” continued Nova in agreement, barreling on. “So the energy I can harness and feed into the gravitational frame with our solar panels is more stable than it would be with both suns risen, so I can force this reduced energy to collide with the gravitational pull of the frame and create and maintain a— well, a dimensional rift, one that’s totally in my control.”

Bellamy’s gaze drifted from the sauce stain on Nova’s lab coat to the purple haze floating calmly within the alarmingly human-sized archway. “Because the rift’s energy level is maintained, it should only connect to dimensions of an exactly equal level. This way they’re kind of at a standstill, both pistols drawn so no one can shoot, so _my_ barrier is a barrier that doesn’t obey the rules of macroscopic quantum tunneling.”

“A particle could pass through without losing energy or its physical integrity,” tacked on Raven in layman’s terms, graciously, looking strangely off-put at this point of discussing the project.

Bellamy realized why as Nova leaped up and toppled over their metal stool. “More than a silly particle!” they cried. “I guarantee the portal could transport large objects, maybe even small animals, in and out: no problem.” Bellamy was struck by visions of loose rodents popping free from universe-portals.

Raven’s face twisted up. “Remind me not to name your lab rats.”

“What happens when the eclipse ends?” Bellamy asked, eyes trained on a small swirl in the portal that seemed to repeat itself.

“I’ll have to wait five days until the next one to start it up again, I guess,” Nova shrugged. “I just got it stabilized for the first time a few hours ago. I’m still toying with the details and want to make sure it’s definitely, absolutely stabilized before I try passing anything through the barrier. Anyway, what'd'ya think?”

Bellamy blinked up at Nova and gave them an encouraging grin that only faltered a little, as he wasn’t exactly sure what he was encouraging. “I think you’re pretty damn smart, Nova. I’m sure it'll be put to good use like the rest of your gadgets.”

“Hey,” Raven interjected. “No throwing Murphy in.”

“That was not my fault,” Bellamy grimaced, thinking not without great misery back to their first eclipse on Sanctum, when he’d beaten Murphy like a rug against the surface of a lake and then held him under until he made bubbles. Murphy’s trust had been all too easy to regain, as the younger man had drunkenly waved his apology off two days later and asked to be left alone in return, nursing a glass of whiskey in his cottage, shades drawn and dust coating everything but the bed and barstool.

Bellamy thought he ought to check on the poor bastard when he got out of here.

The physicist beamed at Bellamy’s compliment, oblivious to the insiders-only discussion between him and Raven, and then spun on their heel to gaze up at the digital clock on the workshop wall.

“Shit! We’ve got to get back to work on those gas masks, Ray-ray,” Nova chided, ushering the mechanic into a back room, who lolled her head back over her shoulder to give Bellamy a lazy grin as she was pushed along, mouthing _‘Ray-ray’._

Bellamy merely shook his head and grinned back, climbing to a stand as the backroom door shuddered closed and dusting himself off. He eyed the wormhole curiously, pulling up a stool to sit in front of it, to watch the violet swirl and roll within itself hypnotically.

He stuck a pen into the purple screen and pulled it back out, studying the seemingly still-intact state of its physical integrity. “Good enough,” Bellamy thought, and promptly stuck his head into the portal.

A flash of white sun.

Green, green, greener-than-anything-ever-was-green grass and weeping pines lining a paved road, small colorful houses dotting its sides like bracelet beads on a string that seemed to go on forever. Bellamy leaned to peer further in. A soccer ball in a yard in front of a blue house with white trim, himself standing in front of a small metal box on a small wooden post, envelopes clenched tight in his hand…

Himself?

He tilted forward so his upper body was free of the other side of the wormhole and squinted, watching the man with the curly hair and freckled, brown skin and contemplated giving him a little wave to see if he might mirror him. He didn’t get the chance, as the sensation of having no legs at all came to him suddenly and the buzz of energy began to hush as the violet tear sewed itself shut around him and pushed him out of the way, worked to spit him out.

“No,” he said, jerking his body backward into the rift as it pulsated around him as if gagging, the violet light trembling, unstable. “No!”

A car sped toward him as he struggled within the tear, pushing his hands out fruitlessly and yanking himself backward to no avail, the barrier unyielding to the matter that had already passed through it. Just as soon as he was made familiar again with the feeling of having feet to stand on, any sensation of laboratory floor beneath him vanished and left his body confused and collapsing onto the pavement.

 _Zip._ The portal vanished behind him, and Bellamy had only enough sense left to dive out of the way of the oncoming car, blasting music and swerving carelessly, and rolled himself into a shallow ditch. Bellamy’s wide eyes followed the vehicle as he sat up from the rocky dip and screeched to a halt on the not-quite-reflection of himself, just as a perfect purple tear ripped through the ground beneath the man’s feet and swallowed him whole.

Bellamy stared at the place where the man had stood and watched the rift shrink to nothing and disappear, leaving him behind.

Leaving him trapped. Alone. No way home.

   Suddenly exhausted, in the ditch of the green, green yard with the blue house and the soccer ball, Bellamy’s eyes rolled back and quantum tunneled him into nothingness.

 

§

 

Bellamy blinked into existence again in front of a sturdy metal archway sparking violet and buzzing noisily, and fell flat onto his face.

He’d had no idea his mailbox could do that.

The cold, gray environment he found himself in then made itself known in blurry, unidentifiable shapes, so Bellamy felt around for the thick rims of his glasses and dragged them in, settling them across the bridge of his nose and nudging them back up where they belonged.

A garage, maybe a workshop. Several wrenches and a blowtorch scattered around by his head, likely from the downed tool tray that he’d caught and dragged to the floor with him as he fell.

   A corrugated iron door with an intimidating series of deadbolt locks, a malfunctioning invention that looked distinctly like a cartoon teleportation portal, and two sets of eyes staring upside-down at him with great scorn.

“Can’t we leave you alone for two goddamned—“ the familiar woman with the pony-tail had started to scold, before her mouth eased closed and tightened into a perplexed line, eyes darting over his limp form.

“Raven,” he muttered, rubbing his head. “Where am I?”

The woman blinked. “The workshop,” she answered curtly, and then clenched her jaw before asking, “Bellamy, where did you get those clothes?”

He plucked his head from the floor to glance self-consciously down at his outfit, running a hand over the soft fabric of his pale green sweater. “I don’t remember,” he said. “Target?”

Raven, at that, exchanged a troubled look with her wild-haired counterpart who Bellamy didn’t recognize, whose gaze then shifted to the wigging-out portal a short tumble away from Bellamy’s suddenly exhausted body, tears rolling down their cheeks. “It worked,” they whispered, awestruck.

Bellamy pressed a hand to his forehead and turned his stare toward the portal, violet, pulsing arrhythmically and shuddering in its thick frame, unimpressed. “I don’t feel so good,” he announced, and at last the darkness creeping its way into his vision wiped the world blank.

 

 §

 

When Bellamy awoke it was with great slowness, several beeps sounding before he was able to open his eyes, and to an unfamiliar white room.

   Panic overtook calm, rational thought then, and Bellamy jerked up from the stiff bed and surveyed his surroundings in a frenzy, attempting to shake his arm free from an IV. He stilled as his eyes landed on a man in the armchair at his bedside, a man with barbed brown hair and pearly skin, and a calm stare scrolling over the page of a book between his hands.

Bellamy Blake had never been so relieved to see John Murphy.

“Morning, sunshine,” greeted Murphy, tearing his gaze from his novel and glancing briefly up at Bellamy, a small smile on his face.

“Murphy,” Bellamy said, suddenly breathless as his booming heart settled back into his chest. “Where are we?”

The brunet closed his book and approached with an unusual lightness to his step, wrapping his hands around the guardrails of Bellamy’s bed and pressing a button near his hand. "He can _read?"_ Bellamy wondered with a little jolt of surprise, but kept silent.

“Hospital,” answered Murphy. “You passed out in the ditch and poor Margaret ran across you while she was walking Cookie. She thought you’d kicked it; I think you just about gave the old lady a heart attack,” he chattered nonsensically.

Hospital? Margaret? _Cookie?_

“How long was I…?”

“Two blissful, nag-free days, Sleeping Beauty,” Murphy sighed. “I _told_ you you’ve been working too hard. If we don’t borrow Clarke and Lexa’s cabin within the next month I think I’m going to fucking explode.” Murphy then shook his head as if remembering he was meant to be focused on Bellamy. “You’re burnt out, Blake.”

Bellamy was reeling, and thought he might pass out again, until the memory of a purple rip in the fabric of space and time tore vividly through his vision. He was stranded in another universe and at present, John Murphy, of all people, was his only chance of figuring out what exactly the fuck to do about that.

   His confidence was unshakable. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> future chapters should they ever be posted will be longer!
> 
> also i am having so much goddamn trouble being confident in this fic and if anyone actually likes it i will try my best to continue writing it but oh Shit brother am i struggling so no promises
> 
> anyway this is unbeta'd and all my problems are my problems as usual
> 
> thank u for reading <3 and for the endless support/bullying on twitter @slugcities


	2. quantum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a multiverse which sees that all outcomes of one occasion of quantum activity occur and are separated within their own worlds.

   Oblivious to Bellamy's head spinning, Murphy flitted about looking for ways to perform uncharacteristically direct interference, forcing a glass of water down Bellamy's throat and checking on the medical equipment surrounding the bed as if he knew what any of it was for. He also talked, ad infinitum, which was pleasant for once in its familiarity. Even in his own dimension, when the whole world was rearranging itself into a pattern that Bellamy didn't understand, Murphy's endless chatter tucked him into a pocket of home.

  Take then for instance, as he gave a full account of the discovery of ditch-Bellamy. “Either you dropped a whole bunch of stuff on the way out to the mailbox and the neighborhood raccoons picked them up before the ambulance got there, or you got mugged,” Murphy mused. “No wallet, no phone. Took your clothes. Unless you’re going through a phase and that was just your outfit for the day, but, and no offense Sweater Vest, it didn't seem like something you'd wear.”

Bellamy looked down at the polka-dotted dress someone had put on him and frowned. He sure wouldn’t. “No, not that.” Murphy grunted as he squatted down and rifled through the small drawers inside of the bedside table, and materialized Bellamy’s old navy shirt, black cargo pants, and the dark, form-fitting jacket he’d been relying on for, well, over a hundred years. Bellamy quite liked his clothes, and tended to put them on all by himself. 

But this Murphy was not the Murphy from Bellamy’s world considering he thought the stupid, impractical little polka-dotted dress someone had put him in was _normal,_ and a quick appraisal of him made Bellamy aware of Murphy’s subjectively weirder ensemble. He wore a soft-looking maroon t-shirt, the words “Red Hot Chili Peppers” curling into a circle around an asterisk, a pair of dark blue jeans, and black sneakers with high ankles. His beige canvas belt was loose and would be of no use if an enemy was in pursuit, but that didn’t seem like something this Murphy would have thought about while getting himself dressed in the morning.

His face looked smoother too, Bellamy noticed. While still scruffy and showing signs of stress, he looked younger and healthy. He looked… happy, if not creased between the brows with the faintest whisper of worry.

It was quite the wonder to see Murphy looking happy, Bellamy thought, finding himself trying to offer Murphy a wobbly smile. This seemed to ease some of Murphy’s concern, and he smiled back just as a woman entered, covered head to toe in loose magenta clothes with a clipboard in her hands.

Murphy was able to get Bellamy checked out of the hospital with ease, no breaking windows or whacking guards unconscious or anything of the sort. Bellamy practically felt like royalty.

He led him to a beat-up white car, and how Murphy knew which vehicle to head towards in the massive paved area full of hundreds of cars that looked pretty much the same to Bellamy was beyond him. He reached for the car door and was affronted as his hand was smacked away.

“You might pass out again and drive us into a telephone pole. You go get in the passenger seat, idiot.” Murphy muttered something else about a danger to society as he climbed in behind the wheel and left Bellamy scratching at the nape of his neck, shotgun. Murphy had never been allowed to drive the Rover so Bellamy’d assumed he couldn’t drive at all, but this wasn’t really Murphy and it would do Bellamy good to remember that before he embarrassed himself further.

“Got your seatbelt on?” the other man asked, watching the rearview mirror and backing up carefully. Bellamy fumbled around until he found the seatbelt, and then the thing to insert the seatbelt into, which admittedly took him a few tries until he felt it click.

He tried not to feel too inadequate as they drove to an indeterminable location, the other cars speeding past much too close to comfort, either facing the opposite direction or closing them in on the sides, and making him want to wring his hands. Murphy, however, cranked the radio up and lazily guided the bottom of the wheel with one hand, cool and casual.

He hit a few of the cement edges bordering the corners of smaller roads and had the decency to look embarrassed, though, which eased some of Bellamy’s growing insecurities.

As they drove, Bellamy gazed out of the window at the city and all its colorful signs and buildings and vehicles and people, having never seen a place so busy in all his life.

Wherever he was, the year was 2019, and it looked exactly like his Earth had looked before the first apocalypse, according to the pictures in his upper grades textbooks. He was comforted knowing he would't be going in completely blind, as it had become increasingly vital to him that he not disturb the fragile nature of space and time by letting it be known that he had no fucking clue what he was doing.

If he told anyone that he didn’t belong here he might confuse the progression of… things. What if this dimension’s connection to Bellamy’s was fragile, and if anything disturbed the natural order of things here, it might… destabilize the… energy equilibrium, or something?

God, science.

   But he knew about things like the butterfly effect, wherein a change so small and insignificant as the flap of a butterfly’s wings might cause a tsunami, and in this universe, Bellamy was the butterfly. All he knew was that it was probably best he didn’t flap his wings.

“Home sweet home,” Murphy announced, jarring Bellamy from his ponderations as the car crept to a stop, in front of the little blue house with the white trim and the soccer ball in the yard, the house that must’ve been his.

Bellamy released himself from the stifling little car and trudged behind Murphy to the front door, waiting to be handed his keys, and frowning as Murphy took it upon himself to unlock the door and paused before opening it.

Murphy reached for Bellamy’s hand, suddenly, pulling it free from his jacket pocket and running his thumb over Bellamy’s knuckles. Bellamy felt his hand unfurl against his will as if a secret password had been entered, welcoming the soft brush of Murphy’s fingers as they weaseled their way between his own. Their palms pressed together with no room for anything else between them and made Bellamy forget his breath. They’d never touched like this.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Murphy mumbled, flicking his blue gaze up to meet Bellamy’s wonderstruck eyes. The piercing quality of Murphy’s usual suspicious stare was nowhere to be found, and the rainwater look left in their place spoke tender thoughts to Bellamy. “Don’t you ever scare Miss Margaret like that again.”

With that, Murphy dropped his hand unceremoniously, flung the door open and slunk inside the house. He tossed the keys onto the counter and a small leather square, and toed his sneakers off as if he intended to stay. He made to move deeper into the house before throwing a questioning look over his shoulder at Bellamy, who had been standing shellshocked in the doorway for a moronic amount of time, studying his own hand as if it had grown another finger.

“You’re letting bugs in, close the door,” Murphy instructed, brow quirked. Bellamy tentatively pulled the door shut and stared at the white paint for a moment, before turning to stare stupidly out at the road. He wasn’t sure where this dimension’s Bellamy’s house was if this one wasn’t his, and hadn’t thought far enough ahead to pry any information out of Murphy.

“The hell?”

Bellamy twisted to look over his shoulder just in time to see Murphy reach out a hand from the open doorway and yank him inside.

“I meant come _in_ and close it, dumbass. We can open the windows if you need fresh air, but you’re lying down and resting even if I have to knock your ass out again,” he directed, forceful without room for argument, and Bellamy had heard those words before. It’s what Murphy sounded like when he cared. Warmth and familiarity melted over him at the thought as he was dragged inside and allowed himself to be shoved bodily onto a couch. It was a very comfortable couch.

Murphy turned the television on and left a glass of water on the short table in front of him. Heat rose to Bellamy’s face as Murphy untied and slipped off his boots, appraised them as good boots, score, and then tossed a thin, knitted blanket over him as if he were a baby. Bellamy wasn’t sure he’d ever been doted on like this, and couldn’t decide whether or not he liked it. He trailed a finger over the blanket’s fibers and inhaled the fresh scent. Everything was so clean, even _Murphy._ Their jokes from back home about wringing out his hair to oil their door hinges wouldn’t fly here.

“Hungry?” the strange, clean man asked, and yes, _God_ yes, but would it be rude—? Murphy, suddenly acting uncharacteristically like a hand servant, seemed to find Bellamy’s response time lacking and vanished into the kitchenette. Within minutes he returned with a dish comprised of two slices of bread with thinly-cut meat and cheese, lettuce, tomato, some kind of white spread, and a green thing between them. Sandwich, Bellamy’s brain supplied.

“Yes,” Murphy confirmed as he sat the plate down. “Sandwich. Very good.” His tone was teasing, and Bellamy belatedly realized that he had said the word aloud.

He’d never had a proper sandwich before, like the ones kids ate during picnics and in cafeterias in old movies. He liked the green thing a lot. It was sour and crunchy, probably a vegetable, and he’d have to find out what it was called as soon as possible.

After bumbling around the house for a while, Murphy eventually joined Bellamy on the couch, collecting the guest’s feet into his lap to make room for himself. On the television played a show about a man and a woman dropped into the wilderness without clothes or tools. Despite their moderate “primitive survival ratings”, the pair stooped to drink from a dirty puddle and seemed surprised when the woman had to be taken away on a stretcher the following morning. “With Ashley resting at base camp with symptoms of nausea, dizziness, and fever, the medical staff believes she fell ill from drinking untreated water,” the narrator said.

“No shit,” Bellamy muttered.

“Like you would do any better,” scoffed Murphy, a puffy white piece of some kind of food falling out of his mouth and back into the butter-stained bag sitting between Bellamy’s feet ( _popped corn?_ , Bellamy thought, quietly this time) who harrumphed.

“Easily,” he bragged, as the remaining contestant shoved a raw bird egg into his mouth and lost Bellamy what little was left of his withering faith in humanity. “The environment doesn’t even look that bad. These morons are just making rookie mistakes.”

Murphy turned his stare from the television and gave him an incredulous look, before letting out a little spurt of laughter that nearly startled Bellamy off of the couch. 

A laugh.

That was real, _genuine_ laughter, and Murphy made it look so easy, made it look like he’d done it a thousand times already. Bellamy watched him with no well-hidden amount of surprise and realized suddenly that he was grinning, prideful. Everyone’s efforts to cheer Murphy up between his unpredictable spells of some of kind of mania over the last few years had been mostly for naught and he’d succeeded, if only for a moment. 

   But this was not an accomplishment.  This was normal, he realized, and felt that small, hesitant bubble of ecstasy burst. This was the way Murphy could’ve looked all the time, in a gentler world. This was how easy it could’ve been all the time to make him smile. But this wasn’t Murphy. This wasn’t his world.

“And you call _me_ the arrogant one,” said not-Murphy, shoving Bellamy’s feet off of his lap andleaving the couch. Bellamy sat up and watched him, suddenly afraid that Murphy might leave, that he might’ve somehow offended him. One just never knew what would set Murphy off, and Bellamy, despite knowing he could fend for himself just about anywhere, really didn’t want to be left alone.

Murphy only made his way to the kitchenette to toss his empty _pock corn?_ bag into a bin, and then vanished into the hallway, deeper into the house. “I’m taking a shower,” his disembodied voice called from down the hall. “Don’t do any laundry with hot water or anything.”

At the words _hot water_  Bellamy just about bowled Murphy over to get there first, but kept himself firmly rooted to the couch, finally letting out a deep sigh as a door closed and signified Murphy’s disappearance. Into Bellamy’s house. To use his shower.

Muttering about the likelihood of Murphy voluntarily bathing, Bellamy began to make his rounds. He was drawn first toward the knife block in the kitchen, hesitated as his hand hovered just above the utensils, and then kicked himself. It was 2019. He was in his own house in a perfectly safe-looking village. Only Murphy was here. He didn’t need a weapon on his person. He wouldn’t need one for a while.

_Or maybe ever again_ , his thoughts suggested. He hushed them, shoved the blade of a knife precariously into his jacket pocket anyway, and made his way to the mantle over a small fireplace decorated by a few trinkets and framed photos.

There was one of himself lying in a hammock in front of a mountainous view, as Clarke crept up behind him as if to flip him over. He spotted the Commander standing next to a tree in the background, arms crossed and a grin on her face. He didn’t have the time nor the energy to dissect that.

One of Octavia, her cheek pressed to his, the both of them with little colorful pieces of paper stuck to their sweaty faces and weird, cone-shaped hats on their heads. Some kind of party. He felt an ache crawl across his body at the sight of his sister just the way he remembered her before Earth tore them both apart at the seams, and laid the frame facedown.

By the time he got to the big collage of photos on the wall beside the mantle, he had survived an agonizing funeral procession of smaller frames. 

A grainy, colorless photo of a boy who looked distinctly like a younger, smaller version of himself, holding a swaddled baby, his mom lying disheveled in a hospital bed at his side and smiling brightly. Jasper standing like a scarecrow and layered in what must’ve been a hundred t-shirts, sticking his tongue out as Monty tugged another shirt down over the rest. Octavia in a helmet and several harnesses, walking across a precarious-looking rope contraption with Lincoln holding his arms out to her from the other side, smiling encouragingly. Bellamy, an adult in this one, holding a basket as his gray-haired mother filled it with green apples, the two of them surrounded by endless rows of trees. 

He clutched the mantle and took deep breaths, wiping his eyes and cheeks furiously. Stood in front of the looming collage, patched together in jaggedly trimmed photos of disproportionate sizes like a ransom note, his heavy, fast breathing slowed to a near stop.

It was Murphy, Murphy, Murphy, _Murphy._

It was Murphy on Bellamy’s shoulders, clad in red flame-patterned shorts and flinging sand from his open hands, his pale shoulders and chest burnt pink by the sun. Bellamy stood beneath him, clutching Murphy’s knees and donning green swim trunks and a crooked pair of sunglasses. A sunny beach sparkled behind them. Bellamy had never swam in the ocean.

It was Murphy wiping a hand on the white garment covering his front, ingredients scattered over the kitchen counter in front of him. Bellamy draped over his back and licking the chocolate off of the utensil in his friend’s other hand.

It was Murphy in a soccer uniform, sweaty and red-faced and knees skinned, signing his name on Bellamy’s cheek, who was giving the camera two thumbs-up.

It was Murphy standing in front of a massive building in a dark blue robe-gown-thing with a flat, tasseled cap on his head, Bellamy with his arm around the other boy's shoulders and dressed in an identical get-up, giving a raised fist to the camera as Murphy made rockstar hand-horns, sticking his tongue out with a wild, elated gleam to his eyes.

Sometimes Bellamy wasn’t even in them.

Murphy with a massive white snake draped over his shoulders, looking like if he hadn’t already shit himself then it was in his very near future, as a stranger in a safari outfit held the head of the snake and laughed at him.

Murphy in a club, sharing a colorful drink with Jasper, the both of them sipping from long, ridiculous, twirly tubes.

Murphy in the process of cracking an egg over a peacefully ignorant Clarke’s head.

Murphy and Monty in swimwear and snorkels, preparing to dive into fresh snow.

Murphy sleeping with a blanket pulled up to his chin, "I AM AN IDIOT" drawn on his forehead and Raven leaning into the shot, holding up a marker.

Murphy sitting on a swing at a park, looking bored.

Murphy doing karate in the living room.

Murphy cleaning up something he spilled on the carpet while doing karate in the living room.

Murphy sleeping, again.

Murphy drinking coffee.

Murphy reading a book.

Murphy eating an apple.

Murphy, Murphy, Murphy, _Murphy._

   Real-Bellamy found not-Bellamy’s clear obsession both confusing and embarrassing, but couldn’t stop his wide eyes from taking in as many of the tiny photos as they could, searing Murphy’s expressions into his memory, heart beating fast in his chest at the sheer amount of photos of them together, pictured or implied.

He felt a pang of jealousy for not-Bellamy. _He_ wanted this.

   Real-Murphy and real-Bellamy were friends. Of course they were friends. But… being friends with real-Murphy was hard. It meant fighting and fussing, spitting mad out of nowhere. It meant Murphy snatching back his forgiveness like it was a tangible thing, like it was something he could confiscate and hold onto whenever he saw fit. It meant emptying the drinks left in limp hands to receive a drunk but grateful smile, and the next time, a fist cracking against his face instead. It meant not seeing your friend for days until he felt okay enough to crawl out of dark corners and forgive himself, where he then sat perched in the spotlight, arrogant and snide and lashing his tongue about the sins of others. It meant hard eyes and cruel words when the day was going so well, what happened? It meant playful reunions and absent goodbyes that left Bellamy confused about every friend he’d ever had. It meant pulling in and pushing away and pulling in and pushing away again. It meant hurt and regret and distrust and a deep, trembling fear that spread from Murphy’s bones to everyone else’s.

Being friends with real-Murphy was hard. A wave of guilt slammed into Bellamy as he caught himself thinking, oh, how much _nicer_ and _easier_ it would be if real-Murphy could just act more _normal_ , more like…

Murphy’s doppelgänger emerged from his shower with wet hair clinging to his forehead and dripping onto a soft, blue sleep shirt to catch Bellamy staring at the photos. He smiled fondly, touching a picture of the two of them wrestling on a picnic blanket, lunch tipped over and squashed under their tangled bodies. “This one’s my favorite. Very us.” Bellamy swallowed thickly and flicked his eyes away from Murphy’s shiny, flushed face, heart thrumming again.

“This one,” Bellamy said, pointing to the one of Murphy holding the snake and trying not to cry. "I like this one the most." Murphy huffed.

“Why do you hate me,” he muttered, ambling off to the kitchen to drink milk straight from the jug. _Couldn’t if I tried,_ Bellamy thought, staring at the collage and trying to trick his brain into thinking the photos homed the many small faces of the Murphy _he_ knew.

That night, Bellamy showered, warm warm _warm,_ dressed himself in soft, loose clothes that felt good against his skin and made him feel guilty and gluttonous, and balked as Murphy walked past him without so much as a glance and flopped into Bellamy’s bed like he owned it.

“You’re… staying?”

“What?” Murphy said absently, as if Bellamy had asked a stupid question that didn’t warrant him listening. He cracked open the book on his bedside table and flapped a lazy hand at something behind Bellamy, who turned and obediently touched the switch by the door, turning the bright overhead light off. The warm glow of the lamp melted over Murphy’s form like honey.

Murphy had taken him to the hospital. Murphy held his hand. Murphy opened the door like it was his house. Murphy ate his food and took a shower without asking first. Murphy put on fresh clothes and they fit him just right. Murphy jumped into bed, opened his book, made Bellamy turn the lights off like he could do whatever he wanted here. In the photo collage they looked at each other with squinted eyes and small, private smiles and did everything together, everything that could be done.

Bellamy tucked his knife under the pillow and climbed into bed next to John _fucking_ Murphy, who lived in his house and shared his bed and smelled like watermelon soap, and held his breath.

“Night, Bell,” he murmured, and then rolled onto his side and touched his lips to Bellamy’s speckled cheek. He then returned to his book, sinking further, and permanently, down into the plush covers.

Bellamy stared at the ceiling and tried not to look like his understanding of everything in the whole goddamn world was crumbling down around him and whispered back, “Night.”

§

Bellamy led a mild life. 

He grew up in a small apartment with his mother and his little sister, earned As in every subject (except for science, _ugh_ ) all through school, was the star quarterback for a couple years just for kicks, dated a few mildly interesting people and went to a few mildly interesting parties, majored in history at a decent university, worked some boring, oddball jobs mowing lawns and laying brick, got his Master’s in library science, spent some time shelving books here and there, secured a career as a museum librarian, formed tentative acquaintanceships with his mild-mannered coworkers, and lived in a plain little house in an average neighborhood with perfectly fine neighbors.

And sometimes, apparently, he warped to alternate dimensions, and ended up spending two miserable days having his pupils studied and his hair plucked and his skin scraped and his brain scanned and his blood drawn and being questioned with a lamp in his face on everything from “How many suns does your planet have?” to “Are your feet webbed?” and “I’d like to check, please.”

When the scientist with the dirty lab coat and the mad hair said they would like to study their findings and he could go now, but prepare for follow-up questions and experiments in the future, Bellamy found himself in the open laboratory entrance, blinded by sun and suffocated by desert heat and the hushed voices of a small crowd falling silent in his tentative wake. Nova warned him that Raven had debriefed all their friends on the whole their-Bellamy-getting-plucked-out-of-the-universe-and-replaced-by-a-slightly-different-Bellamy debacle, and he couldn’t help but mourn the loss of his shot at a true imposter-clone deception mission.

“Oh my God,” said an unfamiliar voice, detached from a face that Bellamy could not connect to it what with the incredible blast of white sun that his bespectacled eyes were still adjusting to with great patience. “He’s adorkable.”

The little crowd bursted into conversation again while still maintaining a valley of space between themselves and the newcomer, whose vision finally cleared save for a few dancing spots, and revealed to him a huddle of faces, some new, and some that he could’ve drawn with his eyes shut.

A woman he didn’t know reached out a hand to him as he approached, and despite his manners he was unstoppable, wedging his way through the throng like a moth to a flame.

The pale, tired-looking man staggered back in his sudden embrace, as Bellamy threw his arms around John’s unexpectedly broad shoulders. “John,” he breathed, lifting his hands to his boyfriend’s cheeks and leveling him with a searching stare. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be here,” and then, with finality after appraising him, “Jesus, poor thing. You look like shit.”

More than that; beautiful, lively John looked positively haggard in this world. Shadows hung under his eyes, his scruff was harsh and his hair looked greasy and unkempt, his shoulders slumped and little puckered scars raised streaks across his fists and exposed forearms, at the edge of his hairline and cheekbones, and made a fleshy pink ring around his neck, faded and settled with time.

Bellamy knew what this universe had been like for his loved ones. He knew what to expect. Raven had given him the synopsis of the abridged version and even still her story was wrought with pain and loss and war so plentiful that Bellamy was unable to filter it through his system, and instead held it in his hands like an ancient book of tales about people he didn’t know. A heaving sigh escaped his chest anyway.

He took step back and put some space between himself and, for the first time in his life, an utterly speechless John. 

He had seen this universe’s Bellamy before they swapped, and he knew he looked different. He thought back to the darker, muscular, hardened version of himself and fiddled with his glasses self-consciously, wondering if this John didn’t like him as much, and was regarding his meeker appearance with shock and distaste. His quarterback years were well beyond him now, and while he took care of himself, he knew he’d grown up into a bit of a geek.

Bellamy stood close to his paralyzed boyfriend regardless, allowing himself to be bombarded by questions from the others about his universe, about their alternate universe selves; feeling guilty when he had to admit to not knowing some of them and guiltier still when he inquired about people who weren’t present and evoked quiet, mournful silence. This was still a dream or fairytale of sorts to him, and he felt no more than little pangs of silly-feeling sadness as Clarke tearfully counted the important people they’d lost on her fingers. 

His Jasper, his Monty, his Harper, Monroe, Lincoln, Maya, and Lexa, they were all happy as pie and free as birds. He wished this unfathomable experience felt real to him, at the same time as he took in the weary expressions and broken bodies of his friends and felt grateful that it wasn’t computing.

He found himself swaying forward a bit as he fumbled through an answer to whether or not his Jasper wore goggles, the lingering exhaustion from passing through the portal eating away at him again. 

The woman who had reached out to him before and had stood strangely silent on the sidelines during the questioning took his elbow and leveled the crowd with a fond but stern look. “I think Bellamy needs some rest, so we’re going to head back to our cottage for a while. We still have a whole week to interrogate him,” she suggested, and seemed satisfied when the horde backed off, some of the more unfamiliar faces ambling away from the edges of the mass.

_Our_ cottage?  


He threw a look that he hoped wasn’t too obviously longing over his shoulder as the brunette guided him away with a hand on his back. John was still standing there, stricken and silent, staring after him. 

A young woman with a tattooed face placed a very large hand on the man’s shoulder and chuckled good-naturedly. “I’m surprised I didn’t catch on sooner,” she said, “We should probably take another break, huh?” John didn’t seem able to respond to whatever that meant, absently lifting a hand to brush his fingers down his cheek where Bellamy had touched him. 

Bellamy grinned, turning away and walking obediently to a small cabin with colorful banners waving from the roof’s overhang. 

From the looks of things, being the fair-skinned man’s absolute smooshed turd of an appearance, this universe’s Bellamy wasn’t doing a real bang up job of taking care of his John. Bellamy’d just have to sort it out himself before he went home again. 

He slipped a small notebook and stubby pencil from his back pocket and scribbled onto an empty page a note about acquiring mood stabilizers, and then began to fill the page with scrawling comments about his dimension-hopping experience so far. The woman ushering him along gave his little notepad a curious look, but said nothing.

Yes, Bellamy thought, flipping to a fresh page and filling up that one too, this time with questions to ask the versions of his friends who’d survived this universe so far. His just as adaptable boyfriend could surely handle post-apocalyptic Bellamy long enough for him to do a bit of research of his own here. He knew the history of his world like the back of his hand, but this one…

Damn, this was going to be fun, he thought, watching the orange suns set low and with grace in the sky, and tripping over something solid and reeking that rolled over with a squish and a _fwump._

The brunette hauled him forward out of his stumble and sighed, taking a large step over the bloated human body in their path as if it were a stick or a rock. “Oops,” she said, “Guess the clean-up crew missed one. Real stink-bomb, there."

Bellamy held onto a bannister at the cottage’s steps and heaved, and the woman patted his back with awkward, feigned empathy as he emptied his stomach. He almost felt stupid. Excuse-fucking-him for having a totally normal, adult reaction to an actual human body blown up like the Michelin Tyre Man and attracting flies and their tiny fucking fly cars.

   He glared up at the stoic woman with bile shining on his lips, even if she hadn't done anything wrong save for refusing to puke with him.

This _was_ going to be fun, right?

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not really, pal. not really
> 
> [drew monson voice] leave me a fucking comment. i love u thanks so much for reading and for the validation kudos <3
> 
> @slugcities on twitter


	3. higher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an extra dimension that cannot be entered nor observed, as particles of light and matter cling to our three-dimensional space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what if,, we kissed.. in the cornfields during work hours

“Bell,” she said. “Bell, it’s okay.”

Her faced changed rapidly, flickering through distorted patchwork expressions of strangers. He didn’t recognize her. He couldn’t. What was happening to her?

He jerked against his chains toward her but did not advance, could not, as the dark cave expanded, stretching the distance between them until his sister was merely a spec against a far stone wall. He felt tears burn hot in his eyes as she became harder and harder to see, to understand.

“You’re alright,” she said, her voice echoing as if miles away. He shook his head. No, he wasn’t. Her true face slotted back into the space where it was meant to be and she made to step toward him, eyes black, and he was afraid of her. He didn’t want to understand, not anymore. He just wanted away. He fought his chains as she rushed toward him, teeth bared in a grimace and smeared with blood.

“Hey!” she bellowed, “Come on, wake up!” and slashed at him with her red-slicked sword. His stomach swooped as if he had been sliced in half and he sat up in bed with a desperate gasp, sunlight piercing through the blinds.

   Bellamy collected his breath with a stuttering chest as he had done so many times before, slipping a hand under his pillow to feel for the thin blade there. Wooden dresser, blue curtains, paperbacks under the lamp, crystal eyes.

   Not-Murphy searched his face for a moment, and then his wide-palmed hands guided Bellamy’s shoulder back down to the mattress with a gentle push, following him down and watching him carefully. “Nightmare?” Murphy asked, voice thick with sleep, and reached out to comb his fingers through the hair above Bellamy’s ear.

“Yeah,” Bellamy grunted, feeling embarrassed. “Sorry for waking you.” He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to steady his heart, slowed by Murphy’s grounding touch. He was used to waking up like this alone, or with Echo, who understood nightmares better than anyone. Murphy was nothing but steady and unexpectedly kind, but Bellamy tightened his arms around himself in humiliation anyway. It was still _Murphy._

“Don’t be,” Murphy mumbled. He brushed his fingers along Bellamy’s scalp for a few minutes longer as they watched the bumpy ceiling together, lost in thought. Eventually, Bellamy turned his head on the pillow, trapping Murphy’s hand between them, and studied the man’s calm, patient expression. Bellamy wondered if he had nightmares. He wondered if real-Murphy minded waking up to them alone. Emori would've been good to him, but he'd pushed her so far away again. He'd done it to them all.

“Well, shit,” Murphy sighed, retracting his hand and sitting up in bed. “Might as well get ready for work.” He extracted himself from the white sheets they’d tangled and opened one set of blinds, allowing a bit of dandelion light to pool over the dresser so he could see his clothes. He put his hands on his hips and stared out of the window, squinting. 

“Goddamn it,” he sighed at nothing, and then circled around the bed and leaned down to kiss Bellamy’s sweaty forehead, who flushed red and stared up at him in surprise. “You call in sick from work today and rest some more, you’ve got the days. Motherfucking train.”

Murphy vanished from the bedroom and knocked around in the kitchen for a while, and Bellamy dragged himself from the soft bed with a loud, involuntarily groan, stretching his arms and back in the sunlight. Nothing was stiff, nothing was sore. He may as well have slept on baby bunnies.

   Rifling through the leftmost drawers of the dresser proved fruitless, and he found himself frowning at a seemingly endless abundance of sweaters, which would be way too hot if he went outside, or if he worked up a sweat running somewhere, or else away from something. 

He tried on one of many shirts with all the buttons along their middles, but it was incredibly tight on his arms and left strange little ovals of skin exposed between the buttons as if it were about to burst. 

The narrow, straight-legged pants and slim jeans the other Bellamy seemed to prefer looked downright miserable boa-constricting his muscular legs, and caused him a fair amount of stress and humiliation as he ended up on the floor next to the bed, clawing his way out of the tight garments.

He settled on a pair of dark sweatpants with tight ankles, and unfolded a t-shirt from a drawer on the dresser’s right with a white skull emblazoned across its front, which Bellamy thought looked rather cool.

Murphy, however, grinned like a cheshire cat at the ensemble when Bellamy ambled into the kitchen.

“Well _greetings,_ Pop Goes Punk,” he teased, pouring a cup of coffee and summoning Bellamy closer with a wave of his hand. He wrapped himself around Bellamy and handed him the steaming mug from behind, which Bellamy blew on with a twisted-up expression. Heat rushed to his face as Murphy tucked his chin on Bellamy’s shoulder and ran his fingers over the slick material of the skull design. “Where’s my nerd and what did you do to him?”

_I either erased him from existence or forced him into my dimension where he will probably die and now I am pretending to be him and by the time you realize I am not him it will likely, in some manner or another, have been too late_ , Bellamy thought into his coffee, and shrugged. “I like this shirt.”

“Huh,” mused Murphy, untangling himself from Bellamy and meandering over to a cabinet from which he materialized something very shiny. “As hot as you are in it, that's my favorite shirt, so try not to spill any coffee on yourself today.” Murphy then pretended to fumble with the shiny thing, making an obnoxious series of mocking, cartoonish "woop" noises. Bellamy sneered. He wasn’t clumsy, the other guy was, damn it!

Murphy had loudly unwrapped the glinting object as he bullied Bellamy and since revealed some kind of flat pastry full of either jelly or slime, iced and sprinkled with something colorful. Bellamy came closer in an attempt to discreetly inspect the weird-looking food, and Murphy shoved a second one in his mouth like it was a mail slot, mistaking his curiosity for a request.

“You should eat something healthier than this, too, though,” he nagged. Bellamy frowned and took a bite out of the pastry, eyes widening in surprise and then disgust. It tasted sweet, but it was chalky and dried out his mouth. Abhorrent.

“What about you?” he grumbled, flicking crumbs from his lips and putting the pastry back down on the counter with hatred.

“I’m a lost cause,” the brunet said through a huge mouthful, simultaneously inhaling his terrible, miserable breakfast and shimmying his pajama pants off as he made his way toward the hall. Bellamy blinked at his thin legs and soft thighs. The brunet was no more muscular than Murphy had been when they'd first met, seventeen and skinny as a stick and stretching his legs for the first time after six years in the skybox, but he was cute, like a little dough-man.

Bellamy wrecked that train of thought and spun around to nurse his cup of coffee just as Murphy began to peel his shirt off, halfway into the bedroom.

“Hey, go ahead and call in sick. I had your work’s number in my contacts, it’s on a sticky by the landline,” Murphy called from the other room, and Bellamy understood at least half of those words. A quick survey of anything unfamiliar in the kitchen landed his eyes on a yellow square by an old-looking phone attached to the wall. Bellamy peeled the adhesive-backed paper from the wall. _Ah,_ he thought. _Sticky._

He pulled the phone from its socket and punched in the numbers from the small note, holding it to his ear as it chimed the same tone, over and over. “Hello?” he asked, and it chimed again as he spoke, which was very annoying. “Hel-“

There was a crackle over the line, and Bellamy was soon interrupted by a voice rather than another chime. “Hello, Marcus speaking.”

_What now?_ Bellamy thought with a sudden flare of panic, looking desperately down the hall and wishing Murphy would have done this for him, too. Oh, God, he’d been silent for too long. He had to say something, quick.

   “I’m sick!” he shouted into the speaker, and then reeled back with a grimace. “I’m Bellamy. And I’m sick.”

   “…Okay, Bellamy,” replied the voice, the voice that Bellamy was now connecting to Marcus Kane. “We missed you yesterday, your partner let us know what happened on Saturday. I'm sorry to hear you aren't well. I assume you'll be at home resting today?"

“Yes,” Bellamy said, checking the hall again, unsure if he wanted Murphy to come and save him or stay far out of hearing range.

“I'm sure that's for the best. Will you be coming in tomorrow?”

Well, shit, _would_ he be coming in tomorrow? He probably wouldn't get out of here anytime soon, but what if the other Bellamy died? Would he die? Would he be warped back? What day was it, even? Jesus, why was the guy giving him the third degree? Fuck!

“Maybe,” he grunted.

Kane was silent for a pause so short that anyone else privy to the conversation wouldn’t have heard it, but to Bellamy it felt like another ice age had come and gone in the span of it. “Okey-dokey,” Kane conceded, after a lifetime. “See you then, maybe. Get well soon.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy huffed, shoving the phone back into the wall and slumping down to the floor with his back against it, heart thudding in his chest.

He’d attempted to assassinate government leaders, engaged in bloody, hellfire war with storms of trained warriors, stared down the barrels of guns and fought for his life time and time again, traveled the universe and withstood its countless horrors, and here he was. Shitting himself over a phone call.

He needed to get home, where things made sense, _now._

When Murphy emerged from the bedroom again he gathered his things and made for the front door, moving slower as he neared the end of the entry hall and fiddled with the details of his hair, his clothes, his keys. Finally, he glared up at a diligently-watching Bellamy and huffed.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”

Bellamy felt the strangest thing, then, as his stomach fluttered up into his throat and his heart sang with the understanding that Murphy had been dawdling around by the door, waiting for _him._ Waiting to be _kissed_ by him.

He approached in a way that could, to Bellamy’s great manly despair, only be described as a shy little schoolboy. He ducked his head when his feet found him planted before Murphy, who was watching him with suspicion. 

Was he supposed to kiss his cheek? His _lips?_ What would not-Bellamy do? He felt his very soul darken with shame as he watched himself flounder like he was thirteen again and asking Candy Puckett to the masquerade, over _John Murphy_ of all people.

He glanced up just in time to see the devil himself raise a finger and a thumb to Bellamy’s dimpled chin, inspecting his dark eyes closely before dropping his arm and taking a step back.

“You mad at me?”

“No,” Bellamy answered in earnest, quickly. “Why would I be mad at you?”

To Bellamy’s dismay, a flicker of insecurity passed over Murphy’s face at the question, but was disguised by a furrowed brow just as quickly as it came.

“You’re acting weird,” he decided, and then opened the door and stepped out onto the front porch, adjusting his side-bag. “Take it easy today. Call me if you need anything; number’s by the phone,” he murmured, making his way to the steps.  “Love you.” 

   They were wonderful, anxious words to Bellamy’s ears, sounding every bit like a wayward, heavy hand falling on a piano keys, and Murphy roughly swiped the underside of his nose with the back of his hand as he turned away. Bellamy knew that tic. Murphy was nervous, terribly so.

Before the conscious and purposeful thought to do so could cross his mind, Bellamy had darted out to the driveway and blocked the car door bodily. “Love you,” he ground out, heart hammering fast as he cradled Murphy’s face in his hands. Murphy, whose blue eyes had brightened like little moons at the gesture.

“I love you,” Bellamy said again, slower, more for himself this time. “Have… have a good day. I love you.”

It was too much and it wasn’t quite enough. It wasn’t a kiss by the door, and Murphy’s very being still seemed to flicker with confusion and concern as he slipped into the car. Bellamy caught, however, a smile crawling onto Murphy’s face as he shook his head, glancing out of the window at Bellamy who watched the battered white car slink off until it disappeared down the road.

He’d done it to preserve the Balance of Things, but it had felt so easy to speak love to that face. It had felt honest and right and just. Maybe he didn’t love his Murphy in the way not-Bellamy loved not-Murphy, but they were family, and Bellamy would do anything for his family. He’d do anything to keep them safe, to make them happy. He would tear worlds apart, he’d give his life away.

Of course he loved Murphy, he thought, standing dumbly in the driveway of the little blue house. Of course.

He wished he’d said it, instead of trying to show it. Bellamy didn’t think Murphy’s sight worked that way. He wasn’t sure Murphy’s eyes saw those colors; not after adjusting to the dark for so long.

Of course he loved Murphy. He hoped it wasn’t too late to tell him as much.

Bellamy turned back toward the house, dead set on finding Raven and Nova with his thoughts jumbled up in the briar patch of John Murphy, and nearly tripped over a darting shadow.

“Oh,” he said, as an animal as black as tar circled him once, spine arched, and then appeared to change its mind and rub itself along his shins. “You’re,” he formulated, “cat.”

“Yow,” said cat.

Bellamy stared down into its judging, emerald eyes. “Hello,” he said, and raised his hand in greeting. The cat blinked, unimpressed, and then walked ahead of him into the open doorway.

“That’s my house,” Bellamy argued, following it inside. He wasn’t sure it was even allowed inside. What if it stole their food, or carried diseases, or shat on some important documents of some kind? Though the intruder didn’t appear to be leaving anytime soon, strutting confidently over to a small bowl of food hidden by the garbage bin, a bowl with JUNEBUG scrawled across its base.

Well, it was only a cat. He’d handled stranger things. He could handle a cat with one head.

By the time he’d gotten around to rifling through an office for Raven’s contact information, he’d been fooled by dramatic howls into racing into the den only to be faced with a mangled blanket and a quadruple claw attack to the thigh.

“The cat,” Bellamy said into the big plastic phone, trying not to sound too petulant. “It’s… it’s destroying everything. It’s attacking me." At this, the cat launched itself onto his ankle and pierced his skin with its tiny fangs. "Damn it!" Bellamy shouted, shaking the little monster off of his leg. "Get the hell off!"

“Ah,” Murphy crackled in understanding. “Bug’s been in a mood since you were in the hospital. She missed her hairless father. Just give her some attention.”

Bellamy wasn’t sure how to give attention to a thing that didn't speak and evidently hated him beyond backing carefully away, sitting on the floor with his fists raised and staring at it, but Bug seemed to approve of this, and forwent her murder spree to settle into a featureless black blob in his lap, effectively trapping him forever.

“You’re wasting my time,” Bellamy muttered, scratching the top of what he guessed was her head and then peeling his hands away as the cat shot him an irritated look, unable to make up her mind about whether the touch was enjoyable or punishable by death. “I need to get home.”

“Yow,” replied Bug, and that was that.

§

He was assigned rather randomly to agricultural work, seeing as the other upper echelons of the village weren’t sure what else to do with him until Nova restored the portal to its former glory. This was all well and fine, because at the end of each row of corn he was allowed to take his basket to the cookhouse.

“I come bearing corns,” Bellamy announced, lowering the basket from his shoulder to a broad, gnarled wooden table and flicking sweat from his forehead. He raised his sights to grin at John, who sighed as another cook elbowed him toward the corn-bearer.

“Just as funny as the last six times,” John praised as he emptied the basket into a deep barrel, and luckily, Bellamy was well-versed in ignoring sarcasm.

Bellamy eyed him pleasantly as John shuffled around in the oppressive heat of the cookhouse, deeply focused as he roasted cobs as if he were forging high value weaponry and diced vegetables with a deft and sure hand.

John had taken to avoiding Bellamy after their meeting the day prior, and blushed furiously anytime Bellamy came near. Bellamy was doing all he could to respect the more skittish John’s boundaries, but it was a wonderful comfort to hear his boyfriend’s voice in such an unfamiliar and daunting place, to see his face and feel his presence.

“Master chef, this guy,” Bellamy boasted to a passing nameless cook with a thumb jabbed in John’s direction, who flushed and hiked his shoulders up in embarrassment.

“‘Course I am,” agreed John, ruffled feathers betraying his confident front. “Tell ‘em something they don’t know.”

Bellamy rested a palm on his chin and smiled fondly as John hunched over a mortar and urgently ground some ingredient to death with his pestle. “Got a little birthmark shaped like a giraffe on his butt.”

John slammed his utensil down on the table as if expecting something within that realm of unacceptability, and snatched Bellamy’s basket away from him as he stormed toward the door and kicked it open, _bang._

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Bellamy crowed, chasing after him as the other cooks howled with laughter. “I shouldn’t have teased you, I’m sorry.” He caught up to John easily, pocketing his hands and leaning into his line of sight to offer up a sheepish smile.

John fumed in silence until they reached the farms again, where the other field hands glared at Bellamy, presumably for taking such leisurely walks to and from the cookhouse. He snickered as John shoved the basket into his chest with a _crunch,_ and found he couldn’t be made to feel guilty for drawing out the day.

He wasn’t sure if it was cheating if they were, by most technicalities, the same person, but Bellamy had found himself perfectly infatuated with the rough-edged double of his boyfriend. He had that tired and sickly look about him that made Bellamy want to feed him soup, first and foremost, but too was he tough-skinned from hardship, and yet just as silly as the man Bellamy loved. He was flirtatious and inflammatory like the John he knew, but made flustered and shy at the drop of a hat as if no one had ever taken him up on his flamboyant remarks. He was _too much fun,_ and fascinated Bellamy to no end.

“You are an invasive species,” John decided, and grabbed a second basket from the back of a parked farm trailer, moving down Bellamy’s next row.

“Ah,” said Bellamy, eyeing him from between tall cornstalks on the other side of the row. "So you’ve come to join your kind."

“The better the privacy for you to humiliate us in, my dear,” John griped, and Bellamy’s heart soared.

“That was not flirting,” the cook scolded, searching desperately for the string to tug Bellamy’s balloon-heart back down from the clouds. “Do _not_ take that for flirting.”

Bellamy carefully lowered a bug from an ear of corn to a stalk he’d already harvested, and caught a sea foam eye watching him warily from the other side of the stems.

“So you and the… other me, you’re…” John rubbed his nose, and then snatched an ear of corn from its stalk. “You’re knocking boots, or whatever?”

“We’re deeply in love, yes,” Bellamy agreed, guiltless as red shot up from John’s toes to top. He expected the fair-skinned man to protest that, to insult him and gibe at the ridiculousness of _Bellamy_ and _him,_ but his mouth had tightened into a thoughtful line that betrayed nothing.

They worked in silence for a while after, Bellamy moving along smoothly as John’s confident hands stuttered and left him lagging behind. He’d meant to lay off and let the poor, tomato-faced cook recover, but found he couldn’t stop himself from sparking up conversation again. 

“You don’t even like him just a little bit?”

John made a strange, choked noise from beyond the veil. “This— I— who said anything about him?”

Bellamy grinned knowingly. “You _do,”_ he said, leaning away from the pale hand plunging through the stalks and swiping at him. “You like his sexy voice and his big muscles.”

“I do _not!_ ” John screamed, and seemed to startle himself as the other field hands momentarily stilled and a few birds ascended from the fields.

“So do,” said Bellamy, plucking another ear.

“Rather fucking conceited, you are,” John complained, setting his basket on his hip to clear the sweat from his brow.

Bellamy shrugged. “Nothing wrong with being self-aware,” he countered, “and I can’t really claim the stature, much as I’d like to.”

At this, John took pause, and then leaned into the stems which parted to accommodate his face. “You saw him?” Bellamy nodded, and John blinked in surprise. “Was he… did he seem okay?”

Other than crawling out of the sky like Samara and dragging himself away from a Honda Civic being driven by an old, blind dog, sure; big sexy Bellamy seemed like he had it together.

“He was fine,” Bellamy reassured him. “Seemed a little confused. Can’t imagine why.”

Rolling his eyes, John reached the end of his row and stole the last ear on Bellamy’s right out of his hand. “ _Such_ a gentleman,” Bellamy teased, misconstruing the act as a favor, and John slammed the corn into Bellamy’s basket instead.

“How long’s it going to take for them to put you back where you came from?” he complained, as if Bellamy had been sent from a hell-dimension with the sole purpose of torturing him. "Just—" he started, turning on Bellamy acidly, as if to say something cruel, and then huffed. "Unbearable. Parasitic. I like the other you much better, and even he's a piece of—"

   "Ass?"

   "Work!" John roared. "A piece of _work!"_

John left, then, back to the cookhouse, and bore the rest of Bellamy’s visits with fatalism. Bellamy turned after a particular coquettish bout of teasing, once, pushing through the rickety door and looking back over his shoulder in time to see John’s head thunk hopelessly and spectacularly red against the worktable. Watching the gears slot into place and begin to turn, Bellamy smiled and made his merry way back to the fields.

If he knew any universal truths about John, it was that he must be told, and told, and told again, lest he never see what’s right in front of him.

Other-Bellamy had better thank him for doing all the work himself.

§

He’d spent the better part of the day exploring the house with Bug trailing him at his heels, only biting him occasionally, when she got bored. He’d found little of use in regards to inter-dimensional travel, but plenty of interest.

There was a thick manuscript in the bottom drawer of the office desk, a hulking adventure story ripe with gore and sex, written by John Murphy himself. Bellamy poured himself a glass of whiskey from an expensive-looking bottle tucked in the bottom drawer next to the space where the stack of paper had been collecting dust and flipped through the monstrosity. It was strange and vulgar and imaginative and witty and perfectly, undeniably Murphy. He wondered if the arsonist had the same sorts of colorful ideas beating around in his head, with no way to write them down and nobody who could stand hearing them.

After his eyes grew blurry from reading he had meant to make himself a small meal, but found a jar of the crunchy green things whose label called them pickles, and ended up wrapped around the cold glass and lending half of his attention to a very stupid television show indeed. It was many pickles and three mind-numbing episodes in that a knock came at the door.

Bug leapt from her perch on the back of the couch to slink toward the sound and Bellamy followed her lead warily, peeking through the little fish-eyed hole in the door to prepare himself. A small, gray woman was stood on the porch, holding a plate between her bony hands. He’d left his knife in the office, but she didn’t seem like a threat, and if she was, Bellamy could take her.

He cracked the door open just wide enough to stick the side of his face in the wedge and glare at her. “Hi,” he grunted.

“Bellamy, dear,” she said. “Won’t you invite me in? Your lovely shrubs have got bees.” She swatted a hand by the side of her face, catching a large, copper disk of an earring that stretched her earlobe out.

If not-Bellamy knew her, then he supposed he should let her in. He didn’t like it, though, and sighed as he backed inside the house and opened the door for her.

The woman was dressed in a long, Bohemian skirt and a blouse with wide sleeves that covered her hands. Her straight, silver hair swished at her lower back, and her heaps of beaded jewelry clacked as she swatted at another bee and stepped gingerly inside.

“Grouchy, today,” she surmised without looking at him, shuffling off her slip-ons by the door and heading into the kitchen. A brown, small-legged dog that existed long and close to the floor shot past her into the house, and Bellamy’s eyes widened as the animal pounced onto Bug.

The woman laughed pleasantly at the sight of them tussling silently on the rug. Were they killing each other? Should Bellamy stop them? Where were all these fucking animals coming from?

“Cookie’s missed her terribly,” said the old woman. “Pity thing, he was, just a’crying at the door for Miss Junebug all week.” She paused to smile as Bug sank her teeth into the dog’s tail, and then sat a plastic-wrapped plate of desserts on the kitchen counter. “It’s lovely to see you up and about,” she said, turning her sharp attention on Bellamy then. “You gave me quite the scare on Saturday. Or was it Sunday?”

So far he had been standing dumb and silent behind her, and found himself at a loss for words that he felt would live up to her standards, senile as she may be. Margaret, he thought, thinking back to Murphy’s words in the hospital. She reminded him of a stern schoolteacher he’d had on the Ark, and was worried that anything he said would earn him a sharp rap on the desk with a ruler.

“Sorry,” mumbled Bellamy, feeling meek. “I’m better now.”

Margaret watched him with squinted eyes. “That sweet boy’s been taking good care of you, I hope.”

Against his better judgement, Bellamy huffed a little laugh. “Sweet _?”_ He shook his head. Murphy _had_ been sweet, in his own way, but he couldn’t bear to associate the two. “Murphy’s been… helpful.”

The old woman seemed to hear something else entirely. _“Murphy?!”_ she exclaimed, slapping a hand and its many thick rings against the countertop. “John told me on the telephone just this morning that you’ve been acting like a cat in a strange garret, and I see he was right! Are you sure you aren’t concussed, dear, or, oh Lord, an amnesiac, you poor thing?”

Bellamy was suddenly frustrated beyond reason. All the work he’d done to stay out of the hospital so he could get some goddamn answers and find a way to open up a rift before he fucked the state of everything up too bad, and he screws himself not five minutes in with this nosey, senile old woman. What was she doing bursting into people’s houses with her weird, poisoned desserts and her stupid-looking dog, anyway? Ugh! Bellamy thought. Everyone else in here was bound to forget anything he said or did within ten minutes of saying it or doing it. It hardly mattered if he decided to act batshit insane, too.

Cookie chose that moment to race past a table in the entry hall and knock a potted plant onto the floor,  _crash!_

“I’m from another universe,” surrendered Bellamy, throwing his hands up. “I’m from two-hundred years in the damn future in an alternate universe. I’m just trying to get home without freaking Murphy out and destroying time. Happy?”

Margaret studied him for a moment as he reflected on how stupid that outburst had been, and how he was probably going to be sent to an asylum now. Cookie sat sheepishly next to his pile of clay shards and dirt, while Bug circled him and drug the mess around.

“Well,” said Margaret mildly, unwrapping her plate of desserts and taking a slow, delicate bite of one. “That’s a hot pot of water you’ve got yourself cooking in, isn’t it, dear?”

“You… you don’t think I’m crazy?”

Margaret watched him thoughtfully, gray eyes softening. “A little,” she admitted, “but I’ve lived long enough to know that there’s too many things I don’t understand to waste my breath insisting that I do. You know better than anyone else what’s happened to you, and who you are. I wouldn’t gain a thing from fighting you about it. Not to mention that dark skin, and those muscles, good gracious. You look awfully different, indeed.”

Bellamy eyed her carefully as she handed him a little yellow square. He took a tentative bite. It was lemon, and just sweet enough.

“Even if you are my Bellamy who’s just knocked himself silly,” she says, “you’re standing upright, and I think, if John doesn’t mind it too badly, it’d be interesting and lovely indeed to have a neighbor who thinks he’s from the future.”

Well, at least she believed him, in her own special, totally nuts way, and he'd evidently been severely wrong about her sternness, that was for damn sure.

“Now,” Margaret said, voice soft like blowing wind. “I’m awfully bored, and if you’ll have me, I’d like to sit on that sofa there and eat one more of these lemon bars before John gets home and devours the lot of them, and I’d like to know more about your lovely universe.”

So they sat together for hours as Bellamy regaled horrible tales and Margaret insisted that there was loveliness to be found in them indeed.

“Two suns, my goodness!” she exclaimed, folding her frail hands under her chin in delight. “What a beach day that would make.”

Bellamy frowned, thumbing sugar from his lips. “Did you miss the part about the eclipse, and the murder?”

“Oh, I just don’t like to dwell too long on terrible things,” she decided, and, well, easy for her to say. “I’d rather keep my sights and mind on the lovely parts of it all.”

Jesus, Bellamy thought. “What damn lovely parts?”

Margaret didn’t inspire in him the prospect that she’d be easily swayed, and turned her back on him to stare dreamily out of the den window, where a bluebird toddled along the sill. “I imagine a world like that would make life and love such rare, coveted things. That’s always the case with unfortunate people and unfortunate places. Every lovely thing must be so special that it makes your blood sing.”

Bellamy still held the principle that anyone from a universe as soft and as luxurious as this wouldn’t have even a clue about the loveliness or lack thereof in regards to whence he came, but there was an old, wistful note to Margaret’s words, suggesting she had once been an unfortunate person in an unfortunate place, whose blood was made to sing at lovely things. And if she had said anything that would sit with him for some time to come, it was that no one else but oneself knew best where one had come from, and who one was.

He was doggedly sure his life was shit and the universe too, but it wouldn’t kill him to keep an eye out for lovely things. It’s not like he had anything better to do.

“Do you dream you’ll ever tell John that you’re an alien, dear?” 

Bellamy finished his dessert and sunk down into the couch cushions, arms crossed over his chest. Margaret had become entranced by a second bluebird in the window, and made no indication of giving Bellamy her full attention ever again.

“No,” he answered. “He wouldn’t believe me.”

“Actually,” a third voice cut in. “He’s afraid he’s gonna have to.”

Bellamy whipped his head around hard enough to make himself dizzy. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Welcome home, dear!” Margaret exclaimed, unhelpfully.

Murphy tossed his keys on the counter and replaced his sigh with a lemon bar. “Long enough.”

If Bellamy hadn’t torn the natural progression of this universe to shreds by telling Margaret the truth, he’d sure gone and beaten his wings now.

“You believe me?”

“You look nothing like him,” Murphy snapped, as if Bellamy was stupid for asking. “I didn’t know what to believe, and I’ve been trying to get something out of you to convince myself I wasn’t losing it, but you put on a decent show.” Murphy shot him an irritated and marginally disgusted look. “This somehow makes more sense than my original theory, anyway.”

   “Which was?”

“He was replaced by a _really_ shitty clone,” Murphy huffed, collapsing between Bellamy and Margaret on the couch and giving Cookie a scratch, but not Bug, who was preoccupied with glaring at all of them from a shelf. “I love Bellamy, and he’s a very smart man, but I don’t think he’s essential government personnel.”

Murphy chewed pensively until the den was heavy with uncomfortable silence.

“Okay, fucking shit,” the abandoned boyfriend muttered. “I guess there’s no point in checking all three of us into a mental institution, so let’s pretend this is really happening. Tell me how we phone you the fuck home, E.T.”

“Oh,” Margaret gasped, clapping her rings together. “Lovely!”

§

Bellamy’d asked around for his sister and been looked at pityingly enough times to give him the inkling that something was amiss with Octavia. When he finally found her, there didn’t seem to be much wrong besides severely unwashed hair.

“Nice tattoos,” he complimented, as Octavia drew a training circle in the red dirt with a long stick. “Mom would’ve killed you.”

“She wouldn’t be the first to try,” she replied darkly, which gave Bellamy reason enough to carry himself more carefully, and keep an eye on her like the others had warned.

They trained together upon Bellamy’s request, who had decided he might like to know a few basic moves in case his journey home upon the next eclipse was postponed and any trouble arose. Within minutes he was sweat soaked and flattened on his back, _again._

“Shit,” someone chuckled. “He's worse than me.”

Bellamy arched his neck to see John, upside down and standing just outside the circle. He felt a flutter of satisfaction that John had not only given up avoiding him, but sought out his company. “I’d like to see _you_ last a minute against her," he retorted, flopping fully against the ground.

Octavia grinned wildly at John, who raised his hands in surrender. “Me versus the Red Queen?” which Bellamy was _so_ tired of hearing. Finding out his sister had been a dictator was one thing, but learning she'd given herself the most ridiculous moniker possible was simply a personal insult. “No thanks. You two carry on.”

And carry on they did, eventually parrying each other’s strikes with wooden sticks for swords, Octavia slowing her attacks so Bellamy could better predict and counter her moves, and get in some practice of his own rather than being beaten mercilessly into the ground without end. 

“This is just like when we were kids,” Bellamy panted. “When we played knights in the backyard.”

Octavia paused at this, a serene smile overtaking her expression at a false memory, and Bellamy used the opening to whack her in the side. “Hey!” she shouted, indignant. 

“Fair and square,” John refereed from the sidelines. “Bellamy one, Octavia three-thousand.”

“Hell, yeah!” Bellamy hooted, raising his stick in triumph. One!

“Why don’t you get in here, then, Murphy,” she suggested, not unkindly, but brimming with irritation. Everyone here always seemed to be so irritated with John, so impatient. “See if you can even hold your own against the new guy.”

John, who rarely jumped at a challenge, looked about as thrilled by the offer as Bellamy had expected he would. “Oh,” he said, “I would, but I heard through the grapevine that you usually chop the loser up into little cubes and eat them, and as appealing as that sounds, I have to work tomorrow.”

Octavia stalked across the ring, yanked him up from the ground to slap him in the face, and left.

“Ouch,” John mumbled, rubbing at his cheek. “Tough crowd.”

Bellamy was beginning to understand why everyone’s shoulders tensed whenever John entered the fray.

“Was that really necessary?” Bellamy asked, leaning on his stick. John only shrugged, and Bellamy poked him in the chest with his branch. “You should try and get along with her,” he said. “Maybe she’ll train you, too.”

John scoffed. “I don’t want her to train me.”

“Why not?”

He stood, and snatched Bellamy’s stick away to draw vulgar shapes in the dirt. “I can fend for myself just fine.” Bellamy wasn’t sure how long that would remain true if John refused to learn how to fight and defend himself properly.

“We should spar,” he suggested, as John traced into the red moon-dust his artistic rendition of two phalluses with ornate sword hilts slapping against one another.

“Ugh,” the artist groaned. “Fine, if it’ll get you to shut up about it. One round.”

John tossed the stick out of the circle and crouched into ready stance front of Bellamy.

“No dick punching," Bellamy established. 

   "What makes you think I would—"

   "John," Bellamy sighed.

   His opponent pursed his lips. "Yeah," he conceded. "That's probably for the best."

   Bellamy bounced on his toes, flexed his hands. John stood stone-still in a crouch, expressionless. “Ready, set, fight!”

John charged low, slammed his head into Bellamy’s gut and flattened him before he’d even closed his mouth.

“What the hell was that?” Bellamy gasped, pinned under sharp elbows and knees.

“My signature move,” his attacker explained.

“His _only_ move,” Clarke sighed, walking past with an armful of canvases.

Bellamy’s stomach felt like one giant bruise. “Why’s your head so fucking hard?!”

“Boyfriend never gives you the 'ole battering ram?” John asked, frowning. "That’s so sad.”

   "You hear yourself, right?"

   John ignored this, or seemed to at least, and crawled off and sat back on his hands, then. He grinned innocently as Bellamy raised himself with a great, bodily ache and held his gut.

“Maybe we could do one more round,” suggested John, as Bellamy glowered at him.

So they did, and this time Bellamy dodged John’s first charge, but wasn’t sure what to do next.Before he’d made up his mind, John spun on him and picked him up by the waist, and then slammed him onto his back, which would’ve knocked the air from Bellamy’s lungs if not for the limbs crossing his back, protecting his spine and softening his landing.

“Didn’t that hurt your arms?” Bellamy gasped out, on his back underneath him again. John made a noncommittal sound, grinning. He wasn’t used to winning, that was for damn sure.

“You’re—“ Bellamy’s eyes flickered down as John shed his jacket and tossed it aside. He wasn’t much compared to some of the men around the village, but lean muscle rippled under his skin as he shifted his weight over Bellamy, and his latent strength was becoming increasingly, and painfully, obvious. “You’re strong.”

“One more round,” John said eagerly, eyes glimmering.

“Alright,” Bellamy agreed, and after a long, _long_ bout of grappling, rolling, and eventually tickling, pinned John, whose face was smeared with dirt and graced by a breathy laugh. This was how he always looked after soccer, back home, and it disappointed Bellamy to no end that this poor John had been just sitting around with all that energy buzzing underneath the surface, like a stallion tied to a post and forgotten. John had always needed a million outlets; physical, creative and social, or else he was sure he'd implode. It was even hard to keep up with him, sometimes. Bellamy wondered how this John had survived.

“So you’ll train with me and O?” he said, bracketing John’s head with his forearms and leaning close.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” John giggled. _Giggled._ “Let’s go again.”

It was a wonder to see him happy, and Bellamy had  _so many_ more ideas, yet so few days left. He'd just have to make the most of the time they had together, before the other, evidently stupider Bellamy warped back here and set everything back to stage one.

   "Again!" John demanded, throwing a daydreaming Bellamy off of him and jumping back into ready position.

   "Okay, okay," Bellamy laughed. "Ready, set—".

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> modern au bellamy: hey canon murphy that apron looks pretty good on you but i bet it'd look even better on canon bellamy's floor
> 
> murphy: are- are you flirting with me FOR him?
> 
>  
> 
> thank u for reading. shits going down in the next chapter so, as usual, get your big boy pants on.
> 
> i would be endlessly grateful for a comment... writing murphamy fic is such a lonely and fruitless endeavor and yet i cannot stop. please validate me
> 
>    
> bonus: a video that encapsulates bug, my favorite character: https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1127254726062608384
> 
> im @slugcities on twitter come and get ur kiss


	4. brane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> when multiverses collide, the amount of energy and the violence generated would be capable of replicating a big bang

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for alcohol abuse. i recommend you skip the second marked section entirely if this would be a trigger for you.
> 
> not totally relevant but i love to sneak song recs into my fic notes and one of my faves, "call me in the afternoon" by half moon run, is a good one for this chapter i think. plus i just think it's neat. try it out for me and enjoy reading. this chapter was handmade with so much love

The next day would be the fourth day in the month of July.

The previous day had dwindled down to nothing as Bellamy told Murphy, and Margaret, again, everything that he knew and everything he needed to know. The not-couple would’ve been hosting a barbecue in two days, Murphy had said, and all their friends would come, including Raven. It was then that Bellamy would get his answers.

Today, however, Bellamy was going to work.

“He loves that shitty job,” Murphy explained, wincing as he brushed a street sign with the side of his car and evoked a terrible screech of metal against metal, “and you aren’t going to be the reason he loses it.”

Bellamy had worked all sorts of shitty jobs. How hard could it be?  


They parked in front of a mammoth of a building, lined by imposing white columns and encased in red brick. “Macedonia Archeological Museum” explained the gold-lettered sign at attention near the bottom of the building’s many steps. Bellamy placed a fist against the glass of the car window and gave an awe-laden breath.

“Macedonia? As in…”

“Oh, God,” Murphy groaned. “Not you, too.”

“You don’t like Greek history? Who doesn’t like Greek history?” Bellamy asked, bouncing his legs against the car’s seat.

“So many,” Murphy answered. “So many people. You two— or just… you, I guess— are the only person I’ve ever met who can talk about Alexander the Great for an hour, recreationally.”

“Did you know he named one of the cities he founded—“

“After his horse, yeah,” Murphy sighed, “he’s mentioned it. Extensively.”

Bellamy frowned peevishly, turning to gaze out upon the hulking museum again. He loved that anecdote. It was a good fucking anecdote.

“Stop pouting about Bucephala and listen close,” commanded Murphy, placing what he recognized as an older-style cellphone in Bellamy’s palm. “This is your phone now, do you know what a phone is?”

“Yes,” Bellamy hissed, “I know what a fucking phone is.”

“Do you know how to use it?”

“Yes!” He flipped the phone over and looked for the buttons, but there were none. Pressing down on the stub extending from the top of the phone to unlock it proved fruitless as well. Maybe it was a retina scanner, he guessed, and held the little blue-glowing clock up to his eye.

Murphy reached out slowly and steadily to pull both sides of the phone apart, and they unfolded into a tiny keyboard and a small screen. Bellamy flushed and snatched the phone back.

“You use the keypad to select things on the screen,” he explained. “If you select contacts you can talk to me. I’m the only one in there. Margaret’s also in there, based on an anonymous request.”

Bellamy had a good guess as to who.

“When you enter the building, you’ll walk down the main hall and turn at the first left, and then go into the fourth door on the right. That’s the break room. Put your food in the fridge, don’t talk to anybody unless you have to. Then go back into the main hall, and come back up toward the entrance. Facing this way, it should be your third door on the right. This is the museum library, you’ll notice some books, I hope. Your office is in the back, it’ll have your name on the door.”

Bellamy repeated the complicated directions in his head a couple of times for good measure, as he would when memorizing battle strategies. Then, “How do you know all this?”

“Good mental map,” Murphy answered. “He’s forgotten his lunch like a thousand times, and I had to hunt him down because apparently I’m his personal servant.” Murphy tapered off into a grumble.

Ha, Bellamy thought, not-Bellamy was so useless.

“Today you can just scan some books and save the files to the computer. Don’t try and do anything else, Bell can get himself caught up when he comes home. Also, you have to work the reference desk at two o’clock until closing; that’s at four. I’ll be out here in the car then to pick you up, ‘kay?”

Scanning books? Bellamy scoffed. “Piece of cake.”

“Remember,” Murphy said, snatching Bellamy’s collar as he made to slip out of the car, a brown paper bag and his horrible little phone tucked under his arm. “Your name is Bellamy Blake, you are definitely, absolutely, not from another universe, and you told _all_ of your coworkers about the horse town when you were drunk at the office Christmas party in 2014 and I promise they don’t want to hear about it again.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bellamy swatted Murphy’s hand away, shut the car door behind himself and approached the looming building, feeling every bit like an ant sneaking into a skyscraper.

“Have a good day,” Murphy called from the rolled-down window as he backed crookedly out of his parking space. “Love you!”

Bellamy hiked his shoulders up and looked sharply over his shoulder to remind Murphy he couldn’t say things like that anymore, only to find the bastard grinning as he made his escape.

“Idiot,” Bellamy muttered, and there was fondness in it.

Then the great, supermassive building beckoned.

“Here goes nothing.”

§

 

They were having a party. Tomorrow was the red sun, and they always liked to have a little morale boost. It functioned as a goodbye party for the interloper, too, who would be leaving in two days, after Nova had ensured the rift was in working order and tested their "in-portal energy stabilizer add-on", whatever that meant.

The red solo cups were tin bowls, the snack table was mostly colonized by baby broccolis, the colored lights and lasers were a lone bonfire and a few paper lanterns crossing overhead, and the DJ was John’s nondescript music player full of classic rock and the occasional mood-strangling Hozier ballad about dirt, worms and blasphemy hooked up to Raven’s amplifier, and Bellamy was having a really, really good time.

Or he would’ve been, if John wasn’t tucked away in the corner and hunched over a jug of liquor, watching something that only he could see dance in the fire.

He was having a Bad Day. Bellamy recognized the signs he’d seen before, when his John hadn’t yet started seeing Dr. Vincent or taking his medication. Before they’d come to know that the thing had a name, and that it could be kept on a leash.

The bustling mass of dancing bodies and those making up the general area for chatting and drinking a normal amount had situated themselves far away from the powder keg that was John Murphy on a Bad Day. Bellamy ground his teeth in frustration as party-goer after party-goer tugged him back from his repeated attempts to cross the invisible boundary and check on John.

_ “I wouldn’t try flirting with him right now. He might rip your face off.” _

_ “He can say some pretty nasty things when he gets like this. Just don’t talk to him.” _

_ “Hey, stay over here and dance with us. He’s just going to ruin the mood, trust me.” _

_ “Usually, if no one engages, he’ll just go back inside.” _

_ “Don’t bother with him, he’s having one of his little  _ episodes.”

Just as he was about to give up and settle for catching John on his way back to the cottages, Miller’s boyfriend, Jackson, tiredly declined another upbeat dance with Miller, to which Miller replied, “Oh, come on. You were the one who wanted to dance in the first place. Don’t pull a _Murphy.”_

He shoved himself away from the drinks table and elbowed invading appendages away from him as he bulldozed his way over to the fire pit, whose surrounding sitting logs longed for a body more than the still and silent one they had.

“Madi’s getting pretty good at flossing, you ought to—“

“I don’t want your pity,” John snapped, and then waved his bottle toward the others, eyes never once leaving the fire. “You can go back to the party.” He was slurring, heavily.

“You don’t _own_ the fire pit,” Bellamy retorted, lifting his hands up nearer the quiet blaze and pretending to be cold.

John made no indication of whether this was the right comment or not, only watched that little fire dancer who had entranced him so. Bellamy scooted closer and pressed their thighs together, and John stayed.

“Are you having fun?” he asked quietly, after a long and warm silence.

“Sure,” Bellamy answered. He nudged a fallen leaf past the pit rocks and watched it blacken and curl. “Are you?”

John sneered in answer.

“Why not?”

With a sarcastic jut of his head that toppled him forward and had Bellamy nudging him carefully back onto the log, John explained, “I don’t want to fuckin’ talk to anyone. Including _you.”_

“If you really want me to leave, I will. Just say the word.”

John’s eyes twitched from the fire to Bellamy’s sneakers, and then darted away again. His frown deepened. “You’re so fuckin’ annoying,” he grumbled. John’s thigh was still warm against his own.

“If you don’t want to talk, do you want to dance?” He could guess what the answer to that would be.

“No,” John rejected him. His face was flushed from the alcohol, eyes glazed. “Stop askin’ so many goddamn questions. Can’t hear myself think.” He turned his bottle bottom-up and drained what little was left of it.

He didn’t look so good.

“If you don’t want to talk and you don’t want to dance, why’d you come to the party?”

John’s face flashed with defensive anger, and then eased into something… confused. “I— I didn’t want to be alone.” He shook his head, then, as if erasing that. “I mean, I did. I do. I want to be _left_ alone. Just not… _alone_ alone.” His stare lowered from the fire, and he twisted his fingers together on his knees. “Sometimes I think one day they’ll all get on the ship and leave me here.”

A crack creeped its way through Bellamy’s heart. John would never have told him anything like that if he’d been sober. He knew this man, he knew he’d sooner leave civilized society and live with wolves before admitting to needing anyone. He’d had far too much to drink, and been abandoned far too many times. “They wouldn’t, and even if they tried, I’d make them wait for you.” John swallowed, looking up with anxious eyes. “Swear.”

He laughed, then, raspy and drunk. “They’d just leave your ass too.”

Bellamy wound a tentative arm around John’s shoulders, and again, he allowed it. “So we’d be the kings of the damn place. No rules!” He stabbed a fist into the air and John watched it punch the night sky with amusement. “Just me and you, two guys on a moon.”

“The stuff of nightmares,” John murmured, a little smile tugging at his lips as he unwound his hands and brought his empty bottle to his lips. “Hm,” he huffed, and reached across his lap for Bellamy’s beer. “Gimme some.”

Bellamy held it away. “I think you’ve had enough for tonight, don’t you?”

“Aw, don’t be a party-pooper,” John teased, reaching out again. Bellamy pushed him gently away with a hand on his chest and leveled him with a serious look. Like a switch, the light turned off again. “Fine,” John said, his lazy voice straightening itself out as he clambered to a swaying stand. “I’ll go get my own fuckin’ drink. I’m a fuckin’ adult.”

“You can barely stand,” Bellamy implored, rising to steady him. Unsurprisingly, John shoved his away, hard, sending Bellamy stumbling back with a strength that the other Bellamy might have easily resisted.

“Stop tryin’ to babysit me,” John growled. “I’ll drink however much I damn well please.”

Bellamy hurried after him as he stalked away, toward the crowd and the kegs and imminent liver failure. He grabbed John’s wrist, against his better judgement. “Why don’t we just get you to bed—“

“Get _off_ me,” he hissed, snapping his arm away, and then turned around to face Bellamy defiantly. “You don’t _know_ me! Stop acting like you care. Christ’s sakes, you really aren’t from here.” He gestured broadly at the hushed and slowing crowd of eavesdropping party-goers, watching what they called the Murphy Show with poorly-hidden disdain. “Someone didn’t send this man the fuckin’ memo! I’m a lost _fuckin’_ cause!” he shouted, lurching forward, and a couple of heads turned away as he looked unseeingly out upon the crowd, pretending they hadn’t been staring, judging, whispering.

He turned back towards the kegs, then, wobbling on his feet, and Bellamy sighed. He really didn’t want it to come to this.

In one fell swoop, John was staring at Bellamy’s back, tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Well, more like a sack of bricks. Bellamy hit the gym now and again, but was in no position to be hauling other fully-grown, belligerent men around like they were babies.

John pounded on his back hard enough to hurt and squirmed ferociously, slurring furious and explicit protests that varied wildly between silly and enraged, (“Unhand me, ogre! This is fuckin’ harassment! I will _slit_ your _throat!”_ ), as Bellamy performed his citizen’s arrest for disorderly conduct and escorted him back to his cottage.

His very, very sad cottage.

John had stopped fighting when they entered the threshold, whether the result was from embarrassment or exhaustion was unclear. He hung limply over Bellamy’s shoulder as he surveyed the place, the dust and dirt, the sheets and covers dangling from the end of the bed and trailing along the floor, the empty bottles and dirty dishes and boarded-up windows.

“I’m waiting for Spring cleaning,” John murmured from behind Bellamy.

“No kidding.”

As John was gently lowered to the bed, he tucked in his chin and flared his nostrils, green as a pea. “Wait!” Bellamy begged, dashing into the kitchenette. “Hold it!”

_“Hold_ it?!” John screamed, and cut himself off with a threatening gag.

   Bellamy frantically returned to the impending tragedy’s side holding an empty water pail that John wasted no precious time tossing up his guts into.

“Mm,” John hummed when he was finished, lowering himself onto a pillow that had seen fresher days. “Still think I’m cute?”

Bellamy sighed, opening empty, cob-webbed cabinets in search of something that would do for holding water. “Yes, always,” he wearily confirmed, “but I’m more confident about it when you aren’t walking around like a Weeble Wobble and showing me what you had for dinner.”

For a moment, there was no correspondence from the other side of the small cottage. Then, finally, “The hell’s a _Weeble Wobble?”_

Bellamy shut the last fruitless cabinet with a huff. “You got another bucket in here?”

“Bathroom,” John answered, flapping a lazy hand. _“Also_ for puke.”

It would have to do, Bellamy decided, and turned John on his side before heading out to the nearest well.

Outside the humble party raged on, and to Bellamy’s irritation, many of the attendees had finally crowded around the fire. It must have gotten much, _much_ colder after John had left. That had to be it.

He shook his head, tearing his eyes away from the insult and focusing on not overflowing the pail. He supposed John could be rough to the touch on Bad Days, and if he didn’t know any better then he might’ve avoided him, too.

They didn’t have to be so damn dismissive of him, though.

He snatched the pail up and sloshed a bit of water onto the ground, indignant, and made his way back inside John’s cottage to find him curled in on himself, haunted eyes open yet unseeing.

He ladled a tin cupful of water from the pail and reached around to touch John’s cheek and guide him into a sitting position. John was suddenly pliant and cooperative as Bellamy cradled the back of his head and tilted his chin up to get him to drink, and Bellamy smiled gratefully in return. John, however, laid expressionless back down on his side.

After refilling the tin and placing it on a dust-blanketed bedside table, Bellamy kicked off his shoes, tugged away John’s boots, lit up one of the oil lamps and joined John on the bed, pressing their backs together to ensure John stayed on his side.

“Is he as bad as me?”

His shrunken voice made Bellamy jump, and made his cracked heart splinter. “You’re _not_ bad.”

“I am,” John whispered. “How long have you loved him?”

“Six years.”

John’s quiet voice came back, moments later. “How?”

Bellamy hummed. “How couldn’t I?”

Swallowing tightly, John pulled himself closer to his own body. His curled spine made ridges through his shirt, and faced Bellamy like a wall of spikes.

“He’s sarcastic, and rude, and wildly inappropriate.” Bellamy rolled onto his other side and turned and John met him in the middle, eyes cast low. “No one makes me laugh like he does.”

“Funny,” continued Bellamy, raising John’s hand and pressing his lips to his knuckles. If John was bothered by this he made no move to say so, watching it happen with shining eyes. “Loyal.” He kissed them again. “Patient.” Again. “Creative.” Again. “Sharp.” Again. “And _so_ sensitive.”

John cracked a watery smile and rolled his eyes, half-heartedly shoving at Bellamy’s chest. They were quiet for a moment. “You sound like you’re in love with the guy,” John teased, voice cracking.

“I am,” Bellamy agreed. “In every universe, I am.”

Lamplight flickered against John’s back, shone on his hair and the round of his ear as he pulled on the string he’d been fiddling with, and it snapped off of the pillowcase. “You haven’t really had the pleasure of meetin' me.”

“And what makes _you_ so special?” Bellamy asked.

John didn’t answer, wrapping his arms around himself.

“I’m going back into that portal in two days,” Bellamy reminded him. “I couldn’t use it against you even if I wanted to,” he promised, “and I wouldn’t want to.”

“I’m a fuck-up,” John ground out. _“_ I push people away. I hurt them. I—“ John raised his hands and tangled his fingers up again. “I got a war inside, I think.”

Bellamy knows the war. He’s fought in it, been commanded to retreat and ordered back onto the battlefield in ten seconds time. He knows it very well.

“I don’t _want_ to be hard to love, but you carve out a place for someone and when they leave, and they always leave, that little place stays and it hurts like hell. I don’t know how many more I can take before they kill me, _”_ he said through his teeth, and he trembled, just barely and enough to tell Bellamy that he was crying. “Then I get angry, so _angry_ that they left, but it’s me. I made them do it ‘cause I was scared they would. I know it doesn’t make sense.”

John uncurled his fists against Bellamy’s chest and watched the inches of space between them with glazed eyes. He always looked so angry when he cried, like it pissed him off to even be doing it.

“I don't want to die alone,“ he whispered, and twitched into a smaller, tighter shape. Bellamy was afraid of what it would sound like if he opened his mouth, so he pulled John in close and hoped it spoke. _In every universe, I am._

There was a pile of broken, colored glass swept into the corner, and a little radio with a shattered face on the dresser. This might’ve been the first time John tried to explain himself to anyone, but it wasn’t the first time he’d thought about it. 

   “When it’s good, I’m king of the world,” John murmured. “When it’s bad, it feels like…”

“A black hole.”

“Yeah,” he breathed. “A black hole.”

They lied that way for a while longer, John reaching up to wipe at his face as Bellamy stared at nothing past the top of his head, wondering if it would be worth it to tell him the war had a name and could just about be called to an armistice, when there was so little that could be done for him in a world like this.

There was _one_ thing, though. One person.

“John,” Bellamy began, hushed in the lamplight in the dirty sheets in the sad cottage in the strange universe, “Have you ever heard of borderline personality disorder?”

John gave a wet little laugh and sighed, shifting across the last inch of space between them and pressing his forehead to Bellamy’s neck. “I’m not gonna like this, am I, Doc?”

Bellamy gave his back another rub. “Probably not,” he said, and told him everything he knew.

John listened intently, red eyes watching Bellamy’s chest rise and fall as he spoke. There was no telling how much of this he would remember in the morning, but he listened until there was nothing left to be said.

And when there was nothing, he decided, “So I’m crazy.”

“No,” Bellamy answered. “You just need a little help.”

John nodded, much to Bellamy’s surprise, and sat himself up when Bellamy rose and came around the bed to raise the tin of water to his lips again. John drank, and when Bellamy made to take his hand from his chin, John held onto his wrist and kept him there.

“He’s lucky,” John said. “Really lucky. To have you.”

Bellamy sat aside the tin, shucked John’s jacket off, gave him a little push and lied him down. “My life wasn’t anything special until he showed up. Now I don’t get a moment’s goddamn peace and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We’re _both_ lucky.” John smiled, eyes drooping. “If he hasn’t already, he’ll fall in love with you. But you have to make space for him.”

“I can’t.”

“Tell him, John. Tell him everything I told you. Tell him how it feels.” Bellamy said it like it was final and he hoped that it was. “He’ll be the one who waits for you outside the ship.”  


“And we’ll play two man moon colony?”

“And you’ll play two man moon colony.”’

John, cried-out and so, so drunk, smiled one last time and fell asleep. And Bellamy stayed.

 

§

 

**not your alien boyfriend**

_9:43 AM_

the FBI bust in and demand ur guts for science yet?

 

**Bellamy**

_9:55 AM_

   Stop calling me an alien. I’m not alien.

 

**not your alien boyfriend**

_9:56 AM_

how’s work going alf

 

**Bellamy**

_9:58 AM_

   You know I don’t know who that is. I’m scanning books and  saving them  to the  computer like you said. I’m not sure what this is supposed to accomplish though.

 

**not your alien boyfriend**

_10:01 AM_

ur preserving important literature so they can burn up  during the apocalypse instead of slightly before it. thx  for telling me about that by the way. rlly great information  2 have and not be able to tell anyone

 

**Bellamy**

_10:03 AM_

   Sorry. It sounds like everyone already expects it anyway. I’m still not seeing how me reading books is preserving important  literature. I don’t even think I’ll finish this one today. 

 

**Bellamy**

_10:03 AM_

   It’s about the Peloponnesian War. Pretty cool.  In case you were wondering.

 

**not your alien boyfriend**

_10:04 AM_

i promise u i wasn’t. and ur not supposed to read them ur supposed to scan them

 

**not your alien boyfriend**

_10:05 AM_

oh my god

 

**not your alien boyfriend**

_10:05 AM_

im going to kill u

 

**Bellamy**

_10:06 AM_

   What? Why?!

 

**not your alien boyfriend**

_10:06 AM_

I MEANT SCAN THEM ON THE SCANNER. THE MACHINE.  NOT WITH UR EYES. HOW ARE U SAVING THEM 2 THE COMPUTER

 

**Bellamy**

_10:07 AM_

   I’m typing them! Is that wrong?

 

**not your alien boyfriend**

_10:10 AM_

holy shit

 

Murphy, who was apparently the knower of all things and had never done anything incorrectly ever, then walked him through using the “scanner” with little correspondence from Bellamy. Bellamy who had a ten words per minute typing speed and was rightfully humiliated after wasting two hours of his shitty life transcribing a book into a word document. 

The rest of the workday went off without a hitch, mostly spent bickering with Murphy over the phone and shoving pages of important literature against the stupid scanner, which was significantly more soul-crushingly boring than reading and typing them, but Bellamy liked the idea that maybe some of the files he was putting together might, in this universe’s timeline, end up in the hands of some boy in the Ark screenroom, spending hours pouring over electronic Greek history books when he was supposed to be studying for his Guard exam.

At two o’clock he ambled out of his dark office and sat at the reference desk, working on clearing the dancing wiggles of dark from his eyes. His coworkers left him alone, proving that his thorny behavior and excessive glaring were working just fine to keep anyone from trying to chat and blow his cover, and not a single student or researcher came to the desk with questions. God, Bellamy would almost rather be working the farms. Four o’clock couldn’t come soon enough. Sure, he also just really wanted to hang out with Murphy, sue him.

 

**not your alien boyfriend**

_3:58 PM_

ur carriage awaits

 

**Bellamy**

_3:59 PM_

   I shall make my descent shortly. My thanks, peasant.

 

**not your alien boyfriend**

_4:01 PM_

oh ew, dont try 2 be funny. makes me uncomfortable

 

**Bellamy**

_4:03 PM_

   LOL wow thanks.

 

**n** **ot your alien boyfriend**

_4:04 PM_

woah where’d u get the fancy new internet lingo from

 

  **n** **ot your alien boyfriend**

_4:06 PM_

u looked up how to text didnt u

 

**Bellamy**

_4:07 PM_

   … No.

 

**n** **ot your alien boyfriend**

_4:08 PM_

   oh my god thats so cute

 

**Bellamy**

_4:08 PM_

   Shut up.

 

He lollygagged on his way out to the parking lot, peeking into rooms that held ancient relics and replicated artifacts and sprawling maps and elegant statues with twitching fingers. Had Murphy said work ended at four? Or was it five? He was thinking it was five.

 

**n** **ot your alien boyfriend**

_4:16 PM_

   u wanna look at the stuff, don’t u

 

**Bellamy**

_4:18 PM_

   They have a replica of Agememnon’s death mask!!!

 

“Weird,” Murphy commented from behind, having come inside to begrudgingly follow Bellamy around.

“It’s incredible,” Bellamy sighed, inspecting a statue of Homer’s head.

“You know what would be more incredible right now?”

“Nothing,” Bellamy answered.

“Ice cream,” declared Murphy, punching his palm.

Bellamy hovered over a boar-tusk helmet with his arms crossed over his chest to keep himself from touching. “I wouldn’t know,” he said mildly, to which Murphy gasped.

“Get in the car.”

“But I-“

“It’ll still be here tomorrow,” Murphy insisted, tugging him toward the main hall. “Now get in the car or so help me I will knock your ass out and drag you there.”

So they got ice cream. Murphy even slapped a couple of bills in Bellamy’s hand and shoved him toward the outdoor kiosk to make him pay for his own treat because “he had to learn.” Worst experience of his fucking life.

“What kind did you get?” Murphy asked as they walked toward a picnic table, picking one of many gummy worms from his pink scoop and slurping it into his mouth like an animal.

“Butter,” Bellamy answered, and Murphy gave him a bewildered look.

“Just… butter?”

“Is that bad? I panicked.”

“I don’t know, I think you’re the only monster who’s ever ordered butter ice cream. Try it,” Murphy insisted.

Bellamy eyed his cone like it was going to bite him. “I don’t want to.”

“You have to, it’s a universal custom. It would be extremely rude to not eat it. I think it might even be illegal.”

Bellamy gave him a flat look. “ _You_ try it.”

“Fine,” Murphy snapped and leaned across the table to get a long lick of it, and Bellamy blushed. He could’ve just taken the cone, Jesus.

The other man’s face contorted strangely. “It’s good,” he said. “Super good.”

So Bellamy tried it.

Murphy had lied, again, and exploded into laughter as Bellamy held the ice cream away from him and tried to fix his face.

“You’re an asshole,” he muttered.

“I know,” Murphy snickered, and then left Bellamy at the table to watch his cold treat melt and drip over his fingers. 

The sun was low on the horizon, and Bellamy wished his friends were here with him. He was… well, he was having _fun._

“It’s your human right to have a good first ice cream cone,” Murphy said when he returned, and tossed the buttery horror over his shoulder. He replaced it in Bellamy’s hand with a cone whose scoop was white and sprinkled with dark flecks and chunks. It looked dirty, and after the butter tragedy, Bellamy eyed it warily.

“Cookies and cream,” Murphy explained, “it’s his favorite.”

It turned out to be Bellamy’s favorite, too, and was almost as good as Murphy’s eyes crinkling up in a pleased smile when Bellamy nodded his assent.

They ate quietly and watched the sun dip down below the city, at least until Murphy got down to the cone and crunched away at it like a dog. Bellamy stuffed his own face into his hand when Murphy licked a pink rivulet from his arm in a long stripe. He never would’ve acted like this at home, back when he hadn’t known that he and Murphy weren’t swept up in passionate love together in a substantially more ridiculous universe. Now, he couldn't _stop_ looking at Murphy in a very, very wrong way.

“If you could do anything you wanted while you were still in this world,” Murphy asked, oblivious to his woes, “what would it be?”

Bellamy thought on that, propping his chin in his hands and watching the wind play with Murphy’s soft, cinnamon hair. “See my friends, but we're doing that tomorrow," he eliminated, and took a moment to muse. "I guess I’d like to go in the ocean."

“Alpha doesn’t have any oceans?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “We’re stuck under a dome.”

“Right, creepy,” Murphy agreed, tapping his chin. “What about when you were on Earth?”

“Not a lot of time for a beach party. Plus, sea monsters, according to you.”

_“Me?”_

“Your friend got eaten by a giant lamprey.”

Murphy frowned, eating the last jagged piece of his sugar cone. “Gross,” he complained with great sympathy, and stood from the table to extend a hand to Bellamy. “Come on then.”

   Bellamy frowned at his hand in confusion. Murphy shook it violently, and Bellamy took it. “Where are we going?”

Murphy threaded their fingers together and pulled him to the car, and Bellamy was a little sick of being dragged around like a rag doll, but it was Murphy, and his hand was nice and warm, if not a little sticky.

“The ocean, stupid. Try and keep up.”

They drove to the coast until the stars sparkled, and Murphy rolled the windows down as they came upon it so their radio sang to the salty air that beat against Bellamy’s face. Murphy sang gravelly and loud, and laughed and laughed and laughed when on a dark and empty road, Bellamy stuck his head out of the sun roof and screamed at the top of his lungs.

“What are you _doing?!”_ Murphy shouted between laughs, and Bellamy fell back into his seat breathlessly, hair windblown off of his forehead and nose pink from the wind.

“I’m having a good time,” he breathed.

“So you screamed?”

Bellamy nodded. “Felt right.”

Murphy watched him for a moment, mouth shaping itself with a comprehending smile, and then tilted his head back and screamed, too.

Bellamy thought it was probably their way of saying _“Nice to meet you, I like you, and this has been the weirdest week of my life.”_

They left the car and their shoes and socks in the parking lot of a seaside bar named something about crabs and raced down to the pull of the sea, and Bellamy’s legs faltered on shifting sands. He nearly crashed into Murphy who had stopped everything to stare up at the waning moon like a wolf.

“My boyfriend’s on a moon right now,” he said. “That’s pretty damn cool.”

Who _cares?_ Bellamy thought. Pay attention to _me._

He hadn’t meant to think that. Why had he thought that?

Murphy’s gaze fell to the violet sea, like glitter and wine, and he looked as if he was seeing it for the first time, too. 

“So, what d’ya think?” 

Bellamy hadn’t really gotten a good look yet. “I think it’s... wonderful.”

Then Murphy was off, because of course he was, stripping his clothes away as he ran and holding his arms out wide, facing Bellamy in waist-high sea. “C’mon, pudding heart! The water’s fine!”

“No man-eating sea monsters?!” Bellamy called from the shore.

“I promise! Only the regular man-eating creatures!” he called back.

“The _regular_ —?!”

“Come on!” Murphy shouted one last time, and tipped himself over flat on his back with a mighty splash and went under.

Bellamy freed himself from his work clothes and dashed into the water with his eyes shut, pushing forward until the water was up to his navel. Then he opened his eyes and a fluttering laugh flew from him like a dove. 

The ocean was summer-warm and caressed his waist with tender, plum ripples, and Murphy was staring at him with big, twinkling eyes. “How’s it feel?” he asked, voice soft and low.

Bellamy didn’t know a big enough word, so he dunked Murphy under instead.

The brunet spluttered when he popped back up, and wasted no time reaching out for Bellamy. “You should have thought about that a little harder, alien fiend,” he threatened, pulling and shoving and climbing, until he was clung to a fighting Bellamy’s back like a monkey and trying to pull the both of them into the inky sea. “For my planet!” he roared, jerking them backward and succeeding only in toppling off of Bellamy like a dead parasite.

After Murphy realized Bellamy was an immovable object they gave up fighting to float on their backs, sweetened by the white moonlight and hushed by the thick summer air.

“You’re very handsome,” Murphy said without turning his head, watching the moon like it was an old friend.

Bellamy’s mouth twitched into a small smile. He’d heard it plenty before, but it was different coming from Murphy. It was nice and it made him feel silly, like he was a kid again and being given a secret love note in class. “I would hope you’d think so, considering you’re dating me, or at least my face.”

Murphy made a thoughtful sound, and used his hands like rudders to spin himself in a slow circle. “I _am_ dating your face, aren’t I? Lucky me.”

Bellamy snickered and closed his eyes, feeling suddenly as if he was missing something. He liked it here. He liked living in a world that would have to really try to hurt him, and where he could drive to the ocean whenever he felt the desire, and where all his friends were alive. His sister, his mom. He liked spending time with Murphy. 

But it wasn’t his.

Murphy was pensive too, and made a small, flailing splash that startled Bellamy. “I didn’t even ask,” he said, “Are _you_ dating _my_ face?”

“You mean…” Bellamy knitted his brows. “Am I together with  _my_ Murphy ?”

“Yeah,” said Murphy, quiet, like he wished he hadn’t asked, after that. Like Bellamy should have answered right away.

“No. I have a girlfriend,” Bellamy murmured. “I’m not with Murphy.”

“Oh,” Murphy whispered, and didn’t speak again for a good while.

Bellamy felt like saying sorry, but he knew that wouldn’t make any sense or do any good and let his head sink further into the water until it trickled into his ears and made the world sound like clouds.

   He’d thought about Murphy that way before. Murphy’s soft-looking mouth, his sharp eyes, the bows of his shoulders and the line of his body against Bellamy’s; they popped up in his mind unbidden some nights and on those nights there was little he could do to change his own mind. He’d thought about all the times they were close enough to touch and didn’t, all the times Murphy’s calculated stare dropped down to Bellamy’s lips like it was a perfect accident, and then stayed there.

He’d thought of it, and he wasn’t blind. The hope was there and he’d seen it, but there was never a good time to let it breathe. The tension between them that had once been sexual and greedy and secret, had been a ready-to-snap wire, loosened and smoothed itself into a ribbon on the Ring and by then it was too late. Bellamy had Echo and Murphy had Emori, and then he didn’t have her, and wouldn’t have anyone else.

Bellamy used to think that he was flint and Murphy was steel and if they touched, they’d kill each other for real. Now that he’d seen the pictures on the mantle, he wasn’t so sure setting a fire would burn the house down. Maybe it would just be... warm.

“Do you think you could ever fall in love with him?”

   The question made his blood sing and still he couldn't answer it.

Murphy sighed at his silence. “Shame,” he said. “We’re kind of a catch.”

“You’re a pain in my ass, that’s what you are,” Bellamy amended quickly, perhaps too quickly.

Murphy giggled at that, and paddled to float himself farther away from Bellamy. “Why don’t you like him? Not saying you shouldn’t have reasons; I’ve met me."

“I do, I guess. It’s— it’s complicated. He’s complicated.”

Murphy righted himself in the water and listened, with his eyes watching Bellamy closely from above little midnight waves.

“He’s so hard to get to know,” said Bellamy. “I was stuck on a space station with him for six years, and I still don’t understand him. He won’t… let anyone get very close. Even if we felt that way for each other—“

Murphy quirked an eyebrow dubiously.

“—For _sure,_ ” Bellamy finished, “and acknowledged it, I’m not sure he wouldn’t change his mind and blow up on me. We finally have something good. I don’t want to ruin that.”

The other man seemed to ponder that, and then tilted himself onto his back again and perused the stars.

“We were in the college library when Bell asked me out,” he said, with his voice in a faraway place from a long time ago. “I’d been chasing after him for months, ‘cause he was a sexy nerd who helped me study and brought me books that reminded him of me, and one day we were in the library and he said, ‘Hey, Murph, you want to go on a date?’”

Bellamy glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. Murphy was smiling like there was something funny about it.

“What did you say?” Bellamy asked.

“I smacked him with a copy of _Gulliver’s Travels._ ”

Bellamy barked out a laugh, and Murphy snickered, giving himself another slow spin on his back. “Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Murphy admitted. “My bookmark fell out,” he added, like that was the problem at hand. “It happened pretty fast, but I think I thought he was making fun of me.”

Bellamy frowned, and allowed Murphy to curl their fingers together like hooks so he could draw himself near again. “Why?”

   He paused, chewing his lip. “I’m gonna tell you a secret about your friend,” Murphy said, then, abrupt and serious, and Bellamy was sure the moon had dropped a little closer.

“I have something called borderline personality disorder,” he explained, and when Bellamy snuck a worried glance at him, his face was open but expressionless. “It means my emotions are heightened, my mood swings are intense, trust is more of a concept than a practice, I’m either depressed or pissy as all hell, or both, and my interpersonal relationships are basically fucked before they start. Unless I take my medication, go to therapy, and have an answer ready when people ask, ‘What’s that guy’s fucking problem?’ I think your Murphy has it too, and I think he’s all alone with it ‘cause he doesn’t know how to answer that question,” he said. “That’s hard. That’s really, really hard.”

That sounded like his Murphy. Bellamy stared up at the dark expanse of space in silence, until the other Murphy gave his shoulder a little shove and twirled him in a lazy circle. “I didn’t know,” Bellamy said, and his voice sounded like it was hiding in his chest. “What am I supposed to do?”

“There was no way of knowing, big guy,” Murphy comforted, and reached out to pat his chest. “I’ll give you the abridged rundown, here, cause Bell printed out about four thousand articles when I got diagnosed like he was preparing to have a baby, and while I appreciate that, it’s kind of simple.

   “Be there. I know you’re busy being eaten by mutant animals and stuff, but spend time with him when you can. If you notice his strengths, tell him, because he sure as hell doesn’t know he has them. If he’s lashing out or closing up when nothing’s wrong, be patient and recognize it for what it is. Most of the time he’s probably just _scared.”_

Bellamy felt his heart breaking a little bit for his friend who wasn’t just _difficult_ at all. His friend, who they must’ve made to feel so alone all these years.

_“_ Most of all,” Murphy said firmly, “If you’re going to stay with him, tell him, and don’t give up on him.” His voice left no room for argument. “I know that’s a lot to ask, right now especially, but it’ll get better when he’s got you.” Murphy curled his fingers tight around Bellamy’s. “Does he have you?”

Bellamy blinked hard, furious and sorry and hopeful, and gripped him back. “He has me.”

Murphy’s serious expression slipped away then, and left him wearing a slack smile. “Great,” he sighed. “You’re hunky and dreamy in _all_ the universes, then. Poor us,” he tacked on, for all the lovestruck Murphys everywhere, and then hurled a chunk of seaweed at Bellamy’s dreamy face.

“Oh,” Bellamy drawled, moving in for the tackle, “I wish you hadn’t done that, human.”

Murphy laughed wildly as the interloper charged and knocked him over, and under an empty moon the purple sea swallowed them whole.

 

§

 

He knew it couldn’t have been easy for much longer. He just wished he’d been better prepared.

When John was fast asleep, Bellamy realized he might not like waking up sober, or at least less drunk, to what amounted to a perfect stranger in his bed. He propped a few pillows behind him so John would stay on his side and crept out of the cabin, wishing he could stay all night.

The party outside had dwindled down to nearly nothing and the bonfire too, and the only ones still circling the fire pit were the village councilwomen, who were no more eager than anyone else to sit inside and stare at their walls for forty-eight hours, again.

“Bellamy,” Clarke greeted, and patted the space on the log next to her. “You missed all the fun. Miller got stupid wasted and was making everyone invisible balloon animals. Where were you?”

He laughed, poking a twig into the flames and watching the end of it crumple into ash. The brown-haired woman whose cabin he had to sleep in, Echo, was watching him with intense scrutiny. He tried very hard not to squirm, and answered, “Reading John a bedtime story,” to which the group laughed. He was unfairly mad at them, still, for how they were talking about John, and didn’t smile much at the good response.

“You were taking care of him,” Echo said, and heads turned to look between her and Bellamy.

He nodded, marking lines on a stone underfoot with the ash he’d collected. “Someone needed to,” he mumbled, and sounded more accusatory than he’d meant to.

“Ah,” Raven dismissed, waving a hand at him. “It’s Murphy. He doesn’t need anyone’s help.”

Bellamy bit the inside of his cheek and thrust his twig into the flames again. They had no idea.

Echo was still watching him. “You really love him,” she decided, “Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he answered, firm. “I do.”

_“Aw,”_ Emori whispered, propping her cheek on her hand.

"Differently than the way I love my John, but I do.”

Echo gripped her knees with her hands and dropped her pensive gaze to the fire. Then, “When he comes back, should I tell him to be with Murphy?” she asked, abrupt and to no one in particular, and Clarke made a distressed noise as all the women’s eyes snapped to Echo with concern. “I don’t want to be in their way.”

Bellamy noticed Emori drawing back a little, lowering her eyes to the ground. She had introduced herself and told Bellamy on his first conscious night here that she had called it quits on her on-again, off-again relationship with John as soon as she’d seen his face when Bellamy held him. She had already made her decision. (She was cute and spunky and funny, and Bellamy was _almost_ sorry to hear that it wasn’t working out. He understood why John would’ve liked her.)

He wanted so badly to say to Echo, _“Yes, yes you should. Nothing else makes sense to me.”_

“You’ll have to ask him,” he said instead, and Echo wilted, but in her discreet and composed way of doing everything.

God, he hoped the other Bellamy wasn’t off screwing up _his_ relationship. He probably was, the idiot.

Discomfort had pervaded the atmosphere and the small congregation stewed in awkward silence, then, and the feeling was so thick that they were slow, too slow, to notice the camouflaged figure stalking the tree line before it had grabbed Emori by the neck and pulled her into the shadows. The tattooed girl made a ferocious but strangled sound as she was taken, and whimpered when the attacker slammed her head against the nearest tree.

Bellamy and the councilwomen sprang to attention, and even in his panic Bellamy was in awe of their strong silence and rapidly calculating stares. This wasn't a traumatic experience for them. This was a Wednesday.

The brute was draped in a leaf-covered mesh and had shoved Emori’s face against the bark of a tree, one hand holding her there by the cheek, the other digging the barrel of a gun into her temple. “Give me the nightblood,” he demanded, with a dark voice that scraped like a rockslide and was disturbingly level; bored, even. “Don’t make me make a mess.”

Bellamy didn’t know what a nightblood was, but Clarke was stepping forward and he didn’t have time to think. He didn't have time to make himself understand that this wasn’t one of John’s adventure books, where the protagonist did brave and stupid things, and always lived. This was real.

   _"Bellamy, no!"_ someone cried out as he dashed forward, and time didn’t slow down when the masked man drew up and pointed the gun at Bellamy’s heart. Time kept on without thinking of him, because this was real, and Bellamy never could have been fast enough. Not in any universe. 

** _BANG!_ **

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :(
> 
> some disclaimers: i don't know anything about archiving or greek history please dont arrest me. my knowledge of bpd is very limited but i like to see representations of mental illness in media (duh) and i think murphy would be great bpd rep (as suggested by a friend on twitter a long time ago, a headcanon that makes so much sense to me) and its mental health awareness month! <3 so exploring murphy's character in that way was something i really wanted to do with this story. i tried to portray/describe bpd as accurately as i could and avoid romanticizing it or softening it up, based off of what i researched and personal accounts that i read, and if anything written here is problematic (as in wrong or unhelpful) i would be happy to hear suggestions and make amendments accordingly. note that murphy's aggressive comments weren't necessarily written in relation to his bpd and bpd shouldn't be construed, well, in accordance to anything in this fic, but especially not as an illness that makes people mean. murphy's just rude, and that rudeness and general irritability is heightened when he's 1) having a Bad Day, and 2) drunky as a monky.
> 
> okay enough big words. tell me what you be thinking. i need interaction and opinions on my fics or i will die
> 
> come see me @slugcities on twitter and get free butter ice cream


	5. dark flow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> distant clusters are being pulled at from some great force outside of our own universe. signs indicate that the force may be another universe tugging at our own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> murphamy song rec!!!!: you're the one that i want (cover) by chadwick stokes
> 
> okay now get in there, do enjoy

**_BANG!_ **

Bellamy’s eyes rolled back. “Will you _please_ get bored of those already?” Murphy ignored him, and threw another bang-snap, and then one more, onto the back patio. **_BANG! BANG!_**

The fourth of July barbecue was upon them, and they were waiting in the humid, firefly-sparkled backyard for their guests to arrive. Bellamy was torn between sitting still, admiring the darkening blue sky and strangling Murphy to death as he indulged in his obnoxious firecrackers, or darting back inside to slap around some more beef patties and avoid seeing anyone at all.

He was excited and afraid, as one would expect to be, to see his dead friends again.

“Want to do the shit snake?”

“The what?”

“The shit snake,” said Murphy, and held up a little yellow fireworks box advertising something called sugar snakes.

“Why’s it a shit snake?” Bellamy asked, and Murphy beckoned him closer and planted a tiny black pill on the concrete. He handed Bellamy the lighter and sat back on his haunches, anticipatory.

As Bellamy was lighting the tablet aflame, soft footsteps flattening grass rounded the corner of the house and stopped at the edge of the patio. Bellamy looked up as ash began to spew from the tablet in a long, admittedly turd-ish tube, and Jasper’s wind chime laugh could have lifted Bellamy’s heart right out of his body.

“Shit snake,” said Jasper Jordan, notably _not_ dead. “Very nice.”

“Classy,” Monty added sarcastically. Harper snickered, swinging their interlocked hands as the three of them came upon the patio.

Bellamy had expected to be at a loss of everything, but Murphy’s silence confused him. Murphy was supposed to do the work, do the talking, be the host, be his rock.

Murphy was watching Bellamy, and Bellamy blinked _hard_ to clear his tears. _Act natural,_ he commanded himself, stood, and then wrapped his not-dead friends in a liquefying hug that he couldn't imagine releasing them from.

“Woah,” exclaimed Jasper, muffled by Bellamy’s shoulder. “Not that I’m not totally loving it, but what’s with the death grip, Bellamy?”

A crumbling laugh jumped from the accused’s mouth. It wasn’t them, but it was, but it wasn’t, but it was. It didn’t matter so much. “I… I just missed you guys.”

“Wow, we really need to hang out more,” Harper decided, ruffling Bellamy’s wavy hair. “Nice to see you too, you big lug.” She pulled back to survey him, and he released the others. Monty stumbled back and tucked his hands back into his pockets, looking flustered but happy. Jasper had practically teleported away to rifle through the fireworks on the patio table. “You look like you bulked up, a _lot,”_ she appraised with an impressed raise of her brows. 

Bellamy gave a gruff but meek, “Gym,” and it was all he could manage.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Monty teased, floating off to join Jasper as Harper grinned and swatted at him.

“It’s only been like three weeks since we last hung out!" Harper exclaimed, “If it was steroids, you'd tell me, right? No judgement, just curious," Bellamy, still stunned, only laughed. Harper seemed satisfied with that.

“Murphy,” she turned to say, “I see you haven’t been joining him.”

Murphy’s syrupy expression melted away quickly, and then said, “One of us has to stay nice and lithe so the other, bigger one can throw him like a javelin during battle. You understand.”

“Ah,” Harper nodded. “Of course. Will you make good use of that lithe body of yours and get us parched guests some drinks?”

“Not a problem,” Murphy said, and stood with a clumsy, stiff twirl. He tried to do a cartwheel through the backdoor and smacked both his legs against the house’s siding. “To slow my momentum, I’m too lithe,” he called back, and vanished inside to pack a cooler, which they forgot to do after Murphy started pulling out all the firecrackers and being insufferable. Harper let out an amused scoff and joined Monty and Jasper in lighting up crackling spark showers.

Murphy had really been happy to see him reunite with his friends, Bellamy realized. He shot a little grin at his shoes. He’d previously been under the impression that things had to really go to shit to invoke Murphy’s empathy. Evidently not, and it was… kind of sweet. Maybe he hadn’t been paying enough attention to his own universe’s least favorite inhabitant after all.

Clarke followed the delinquent trio by not far behind, and Bellamy greeted her with an embrace less likely to shatter bones but tender nonetheless. He stuck out an awkward hand for the one that the Commander didn’t have intertwined with Clarke’s, the Commander who wore a little yellow hair-clip and a green jumper rather than chains and furs and warpaint, and pulled him forcibly into a hug with an exasperated smile. “I think we’ve known each other long enough to warrant a hug, Bellamy,” she sighed into his shoulder. He was inclined to disagree, but Clarke was watching him and the Commander was pulling away with a newfound shyness and he was meant to be Bellamy Blake of Earth, 29 years old and only that, so he tugged her back in and hugged fiercely the young warlord with the tiny hair-clip. 

Maybe they could have all been friends with Lexa, in another world, Clarke had said once. Little did she know, Bellamy thought with a smile, his attitude on this whole touchy-feely moment with the traitorous Commander of the Twelve Clans changing for the better. Much to Murphy’s enjoyment, who had appeared at his side with two beers, and then only one.

“You don’t even really know Lexa, do you?” he whispered as the couple sauntered off to get drinks.

Bellamy grimaced, holding his beer close to his chin. “That obvious?”

“Only if you’re looking close enough to notice your constipation face,” Murphy assured him. “I still wouldn’t pursue theater, though.” He then tangled their fingers together, and snickered when Bellamy jumped out of his skin for a moment.  “You’re much more skittish than you look,” he surmised, watching idly as Jasper scaled a backyard tree and bounced on the branch, Monty video-recording him with his phone.

“You haven’t met _my_ you,” Bellamy explained, bordering on nonsensical. “If he grabbed my hand like that I’d expect him to be ripping my arm off to beat me with it, not just… holding it.”

“Asante sana squash banana, wewe ndugu mimi _hap_ —!” Jasper’s chanting was cut short as the branch split off from the tree and discarded him, sending him crashing down onto the lawn. Monty looked very pleased with his new video, and Murphy’s grip tightened as he laughed.

“I really— _hah_ — I really think you should get to know him better.”

“Maybe so,” Bellamy agreed, watching as Murphy dissolved into hunched-over chuckles, having decided that Jasper falling out of a tree was even funnier than he had originally thought it to be. Maybe so, indeed.

When Octavia showed up with Lincoln in tow, Bellamy decided he knew Murphy plenty well enough.

“Bell!” she called, and Bellamy shot Murphy a venomous glare as she skipped towards them around the back of the house.

Murphy shrugged, not looking apologetic in the slightest. “I know you two aren’t exactly peas in a pod in your world, but my Bellamy gets stomach aches when he’s apart from her for too long and I’d never hear the end of it from either of them if I didn’t invite her. Try not to kill her,” he advised, patting him on the shoulder and giving the newly-arrived pair a lazy wave before sauntering off.

“Please tell me Murphy didn’t forget Luna and Lincoln's veggie burgers this year,” Octavia mumbled into his shirt as she wrapped him in a tight hug. He couldn’t decide between melting into it or squeezing her until her eyes popped out. But this wasn’t the Octavia who forced people into cannibalism, who destroyed armies for her own pride, who shoved her brother into a fighting pit. This was an Octavia who was wholly preoccupied with making sure her giant, _alive_ boyfriend could enjoy cruelty-free sustenance at a party, and dutifully so as she glared over his shoulder in search of Murphy, intending to hunt him down for further questioning about black bean burgers.

He tried not to be too obviously uncomfortable in returning her embrace, and tried even harder not to reintroduce his pre-party snack to the world via his mouth when Lincoln clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Sorry about kind of sort of getting you killed’ didn’t seem like the right thing to say at a 4th of July party in the 21st century, where killing people was always wrong and usually didn’t clear up after an apology or two. Not to mention he’d be hospitalized on the justification of insanity, which would make this whole getting-back-home business substantially more problematic than it already was.

If he subtly avoided the pair for the remainder of the party, and maybe came around to missing his little sister for the way he remembered her, that was his own gun to shoot himself in the foot with.

Then came Raven, touching knees and sharing grins with Luna, and oh, _oh_ that was sad, and Bellamy found himself at a loss. _‘Hi there, invader from planet Alpha in an alternate timeline, abandoned here by giant purple hole in the sky. Would you perhaps have a glowing portal in your living room, and if not, would you mind whipping one up for me real quick?’_ was not likely to come out of his mouth in one piece either.

Murphy caught him eyeing her as he rested his vaguely sweaty cheek on Bellamy’s shoulder, rubbing his stomach after inhaling his burger. (Bellamy had been aghast when Murphy peeled the pickles off that his not-boyfriend had added for him when making their plates, and then quietly pleased when Murphy had discarded them on Bellamy’s plate.) “You might as well just buck up and ask. Worst case scenario is she thinks you’re trying to be funny, and your failure won’t come as an earth-shattering surprise to anyone.”

“You know, I thought you’d be nicer than my Murphy.”

“Why?” not-Murphy asked, a snakelike little grin curling up on his face. Bellamy thought to shrug him off and perhaps knock his patio chair over, but let the bastard be. He always did.

Murphy’s friends showed up late, Emori on a little beige bicycle with a shiny bell and Miller, Bryan, and Mbege swaggering out of someone’s tinted-windowed van.

“Miller and Mbege were arrested for theft on the Ark, you know,” Bellamy gossiped in a low voice, as Murphy threw up a lazy wave at his friends.

“Won’t be long before they get busted here, too,” Murphy whispered back, snickering. “Don’t tell Bell. He can be so sensitive about that kind of thing; might ask me not to fraternize with criminals anymore.”

“I do crime,” Bellamy argued, and Murphy’s snickers turned into one long wheeze.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Yeah, you do, and that’s awesome, really, but my Bell is a little sweater-and-glasses-wearing archivist who wanted to be a cop before college. He does not do crime, and by extension neither do I, nor do any of our friends, so don’t tell Bell.”

Jasper, still nursing a growing bruise on his elbow, passed his blunt to Monty where they laid in the grass running against the edge of an already-hazy sunset.

“I said he was sensitive, not a dictator,” Murphy argued at Bellamy's suspicious look, and then he glanced up at Bellamy, discreetly unfolding another box of bang-snaps. “I like you,” he said, his throat moving against Bellamy’s shoulder as he leaned in close.

Bellamy knocked the side of his head gently against the top of Murphy’s. “Like you too.”

Murphy popped a couple of bang-snaps against the patio, much to everyone else’s annoyance.Pop, pop, pop. He stopped throwing them, eventually, fiddling with the twisted paper tail of one. “But I miss my stupid boyfriend,” he muttered. “It’s weird how different you are.”

“Thanks,” Bellamy replied dryly.

“Not in a bad way,” Murphy defended himself. “It’s just that you’re technically the same person, but you’re not really him at all. Much cooler.”

“Is relentlessly making fun of him how you cope?”

“Of course,” he answered. “Have you met me?”

Bellamy sighed. “I guess I have.” 

Murphy smiled knowingly. “With love, big man. Always with love.”

And everything had been going so well, and he’d almost worked up the nerve to talk to Raven about the portal, and the setting sun was discouraging the mosquitos and cooling their beers, and Murphy’s hand was nowhere near the box of snap-bangs, so Bellamy hadn’t been expecting it when a thunderous _CRACK!_ like a bomb bursting in air like a mine underfoot like a bunker blowing up shook his chest and—

_They had to take Shallow Valley or they’d all die. The engine was shot, Murphy urged everyone out of the rover. He was so pissed about it all. War, and everything._

_They took tentative cover and Echo fired a perfect shot at the first cannon. His heart was beating so fast, too fast. All the people he loved were under fire. There was so much quiet, so much safe for so many years, and now Murphy was firing the gatling like he was mad and Bellamy had to take it as a good sign that he was still alive._

_It was a good sign as men dropped, Bellamy told himself, as they wiped out prisoners who only wanted a place to live just because they wanted it more, and even after all these thousands of years humans hadn’t figured out how to partition their resources. But they had known how to kill and take from the very beginning, and had proved themselves to be very, very good at it._

_It was ambitious to breathe, and his blood sang. He sprinted through a pond of blood that splashed up to his knees and signaled to Murphy: cut the gatling, cut the gatling, cut the gatling. Murphy took a second too long to peel himself away from the big trigger like he was afraid to stop shooting, like he was afraid to die someplace quiet._

_The second cannon went down, and the silence didn’t last long after. Wonkru roared, the rushing of hundreds of feet toward the epicenter made the rocks under his feet shudder. They were all screaming so loud, but they were afraid, too. They were just people, most of them. So few of them trained warriors. Octavia and Madi were leading the charge, they could still be shot even if the cannons had been obliterated. “Bellamy!” someone shouted, as he turned and made for Eden with the rest of the army, facing the bullets that whizzed by like their lives were ever under their own jurisdiction. “Bellamy!_ Bell!”

Oh, but he wasn’t in Shallow Valley at all, was he? He was arched up in a patio chair in the picket-fenced backyard of a little blue house, at a party with all his dead friends who stared at him like he was totally nuts, as he scrambled to find his breath.

“Ah, there you are,” Murphy murmured, very close as the fog cleared from Bellamy’s eyes. Everyone was still looking, what had he said? He hadn’t screamed, had he? “Why don’t we get you inside?”

Bellamy, breathing raggedly and vaguely aware of a tremble traveling through his everything, took Murphy’s hand and followed as they made slowly for the glass door. Murphy didn’t say a word to their guests, only led the party-ruiner to their bedroom and sat him down on the bed. He looked contemplative for a moment, and then unplugged a pair of thick headphones from the laptop sitting on the dresser and put them down over Bellamy’s ears.

“It was just aerial fireworks,” he said, and plugged the headphones into the jack of his phone. “You’ll like this one.” He pressed play on an album that Bellamy was too… _everything_ to read the name of, and it rolled out a song that was loud but slow. Then Murphy tapped on something else, and summoned a little virtual notepad.

_“sorry, wasnt thinking,”_ he typed.

Bellamy shook his head, and Murphy continued.

_“i should have guessed. not to mention its only been a few days for u since the last war, hasnt it?”_ Murphy tapped in. Bellamy left his eyes resting on his hands in his lap and found himself wanting of words to say. _“i’ll tell them u had a heat stroke or smthing. want 2 stay inside until the party’s over? u can just call raven tomorrow.”_ Bellamy hated the phone, but going back out there now seemed like an unnecessary risk. A concern lingered, as well, that enjoying the presence of his long-since passed friends would make it that much harder to leave. The wild, selfish thought to stay hadn’t _not_ crossed his mind since settling into this new world, this clean slate that was so easy, and so undeserved.

“I guess I shouldn’t embarrass the other me any more than I already have,” he answered, and hoped he wasn’t yelling. Murphy’s tilting mouth did not inspire confidence. “I’m not doing a very good job of pretending to be… normal.”

_“dont worry about it. ur not as interesting as u think u are babe. be back in a bit.”_ Murphy left, then, smiling, and closed the door behind him.

_Babe._ Murphy, or at least the one back home, wasn’t the type to use pet names. He _was_ the type to find great joy in getting a rise out of Bellamy. _Not this time,_ he thought sternly, and beat a slow shiver back down his spine.

Feeling his heart start to come back down into his chest, Bellamy hesitantly settled back into the pillows. He scrolled through Murphy’s many, many albums, enough albums to never hear the same song twice, but never changed it from what Murphy had chosen for him. Alabama Shakes. It was feel-good music, and Bellamy was… not feeling good, but certainly could have been in worse hands.

He was used to this of course. They all were. Harper used to go white when she heard the sounds of drills, her eyes gone off into a faraway place. Monty had sometimes trailed off while telling stories about Jasper, and sat trembling until the memory had passed. Echo squeezed his hand until he thought it might break and glared into empty space, unreachable, when she smelled something burning before she saw it. No one ever asked about Emori’s family. Raven had to stop working when electricity buzzed around the wires she was manipulating, raising the fine hair on her arms like such was the moment before a shock collar was cranked to ten, remembering another mother who wasn’t a mother at all. And Murphy was a whole other can of worms, standing with one foot in the present and the other hanging off in some abyss, crawling at the bottom with Hell and death and torture and abuse and loss and choking… swinging… hanging.

They were all so used to this. Didn’t make it easier. Just made it a wound that never closed all the way, and sorely reminded Bellamy that these people, these people who stared at him like he was crazy, were not his people. They didn’t understand. Not even Murphy.

He drifted off to the music and woke again, before his nightmares had a chance to do it for him, to the mattress dipping. “They’re gone,” Murphy mouthed, sitting down on the other end of the bed.

Bellamy rubbed his eyes, sliding the headphones off of his ears. Murphy didn’t refuse him that, so he assumed it was okay to have them off. Christ, how had he slept like that? “How long was I…”

“Three hours,” Murphy answered. “The party just wasn’t the same without you harassing everyone about fire safety and then chasing Jasper around with the bang-snaps, so everyone headed home a bit earlier.”

“But I hate the bang-snaps.”  


“Well, you usually like them,” Murphy shrugged. “Come help me clean up, the neighbors have stopped launching the big fireworks.”

Bellamy abandoned the phone and headphones on the pillow and followed Murphy through the house, out onto the patio. The sky had melted down to black and now glittered with stars. Bellamy looked a little warily off to the right, where the sound like a bomb going off had come from and nearly blown his cover.

“Don’t worry, they’re done. Promise.”

“How do you know?”

“Trust me,” Murphy insisted, looking proud of himself as he scraped plates and cups into a bin. “They’ll be keeping it down.”

Bellamy helped him sweep bang snap wrappers and burnt-edged cardboard tubes off of the cement, and looked up from the dustpan to where Murphy stood with his hip jutting out, waiting for Bellamy to ask him what he’d done.

“You didn’t kill anyone, did you?” he asked. “Because I’m very sensitive about that kind of thing.”

Murphy deflated with a breathy laugh. “Sadly, no. Let’s just say Bell and I are no longer invited to the neighborhood corn-hole tournament. Boo-hoo.”

“I’m sure he’ll be inconsolable,” Bellamy said, mouth turned up in a smile. Murphy had gone and cussed out the neighbors on his behalf. He always was so much like a lousy guard dog.

_“Where’s your knight in unwashed armor, O Rebel King?” Octavia asked, as Bellamy hunched over the narrow table in his tent and made adjustments to Murphy’s sloppy but enthusiastic blueprints for the wall. Still grieving over Atom, dark smudges sat under Octavia's eyes and pressed her shoulders into a hunch, but she was strong. She would be okay._

_“Off making the builders cry, I’m sure,” he muttered, changing Murphy’s “wuden post heer” to what he hoped it was meant to say. “And don’t you start calling me that, too.”_

_“Is he much help?”_

_“Murphy? He’s…” Bellamy looked up for a moment at the red canvas wall, and then hung his head back down to the paper with a snort. “He’s not boring, that’s for damn sure.”_

_“Jesus,” Octavia exclaimed, leaning back against the table with her arms crossed. “You think_ everyone’s _boring. Might as well just say he’s_ enrapturing. _I’m sure he’d reciprocate your feelings, with what I’ve seen of him trotting at your heels all week.”_

_Bellamy felt his ears go hot. “O,” he warned. “There’s no_ feelings. _He’s just… he’s just helping me out.”_

_“I’m sure.”_

_“I mean around the camp.”_

_“Oh, I’ll bet.”_

_“With the wristbands! And on the wall!”_

_“I don’t need all the gruesome details, big brother.”_

_“Float me,” Bellamy griped, swiping a hand over his face. “Why don’t you go hang out with Goggle Boy or something.”_

_“You’re even starting to sound like him,” Octavia teased, poking him in the side. “That’s too cute. It’s been a long time since you had a crush, I bet. Hasn’t it Bell?” He hadn’t a chance to refute her slanderous claims, for lack of his sister pausing to even breathe. “You could’ve chosen anyone to be your little guard dog, and you chose_ him. _You could’ve at least picked a lackey with some muscle on them. I just don’t get it.” She shook her head and pushed off the table. “My handsome brother, smitten with the slimiest guy in camp,” she muttered, heading for the opening._

_“I’m not— He’s not my…_ Not!” _he cried, banging his fist against the table. He collected himself with a breath to try again, and turned around.“We’re just—,“ he began, hoping for a bit more eloquent go of it, but she was already gone, the tent flap fluttering in her wake. “…Friends.”_

_“_ Hey, Earth to Bellamy?”

“Nothing, sorry, I’m here,” he said, and then watched Murphy become slowly distracted by this and that, and ultimately decide that cleaning wasn’t all that interesting and certainly not worthy of his time at the moment. What _was_ deemed a good use of his time was cranking up the stereo and strutting out to the middle of the lawn to give Bellamy a private sparkler show, one involving a lot of strange, aggressive, yet hypnotic dance moves, and Bellamy could do no more than watch him fool around with glittering eyes.

When his sparklers were not long for this world, Murphy sauntered over, swaying his hips to the music, and used them to herd Bellamy out into the yard. Murphy danced around him in circles to some hip-hop song on the boombox, burning hearts in the air around Bellamy’s face just to make him laugh. His face was lit up orange in the dark, expression faux serious and suave as he brushed up against Bellamy, and once, swept his back along Bellamy’s and spun around to press their chests together before moving away again, which, stupidly, left Bellamy’s mouth dry.

For a minute longer he stood stiffly as Murphy closed his eyes and got lost in the music, as he was wont to do, still swirling around Bellamy like a firestorm. “Don’t you think he’s attractive, at least? He’s fun, isn’t he? Not as much as me, of course, but I’ll bet he is. You seem like you could _use_ a little fun.”

Bellamy’s composure faltered for a moment and Murphy paused in his circling long enough for his sparklers to dwindle down to black nothingness, waiting with no well-hidden amount of eagerness. “I… of course. He is, I mean. I… Yeah.”

Murphy watched him thoughtfully, and then walked over to the patio table, lit two more sparklers, and came back and stuck one in Bellamy’s hand. It fizzled with tiny explosions as Bellamy stared down at it.

“Damn, I’m good,” Murphy said at last. “He’s not even _here._ ” And then he bloomed with amusement at Bellamy’s stricken look. “Oh, don't make that face. It’s not your fault my sexiness pervades space and time.”

Bellamy sighed as not-Murphy resumed snaking around him in circles, giving a wave of his hair a flamboyant and flirtatious flick to a beat of whatever new song had gotten him going again, mouthing the lyrics as he went. Bellamy rolled his eyes, trying very hard not to imagine that not-Murphy was someone else who danced to damn near the same tempo, and tried even harder not to think about how much trouble he was in.

After all, he’d chosen Murphy from the very beginning, hadn’t he?

 

§

 

The first time he came to, he had a sense of being in the wrong place, and soon let go of the waking world again. The second time, he opened his eyes long enough to notice that overhead lied wooden beams and a gable roof instead of a white popcorn ceiling, which was strange, but not strange enough to keep him awake. The third time, he noticed that his chest hurt. And the last time, his chest no longer hurt and he noticed like he hadn’t noticed anything before, John, at his bedside with a pair of earbuds plugged into his ears, watching the wide blades on the ceiling fan whirl around.

John glanced over when he stirred, collecting his earbuds in his fist and moving his treasured music player onto the little bedside table. “He lives,” the man murmured, leaning forward and propping his chin on the bed’s railing.

Bellamy groaned as he tried to sit up, and was pushed gingerly back down. Bellamy stared off at the opposite wall, and then dropped his eyes down and scanned the room, finding several other beds lining the walls, some of them occupied by other resting people. There was a thick pad of gauze on the right side of his bare chest, and a pale hand guided his own away when he tried to prod at it.

Bellamy looked up at John, who still held his wrist. “I got shot.”

“I’d have to agree.”

“Is… Emori okay?”

John swallowed, looking as if he'd been stressing over that very question for quite some time. “Yeah, she’s alright. Headaches for a while, probably. The Creep of Gabriel’s locked up, Emori disarmed him after you… _distracted_ him.” He casted his gaze out of the wide window inviting stretches of pale sunlight into the med bay from behind Bellamy. “You could’ve gotten both of you killed, running at him like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Bellamy said quietly. “I wasn’t thinking, I just—“

“You always have to be the hero,” John quipped, and then patted Bellamy on the thigh, a wide lump covered by a knitted blanket or three. “Don’t be sorry. You were trying to save her in your own stupid, impulsive way. She’ll understand that. She’ll appreciate it. I… I appreciate it.”

Bellamy wanted to give him a weak smile, but found he couldn’t do much with his face at all. He wanted John. The real John. He wanted Bug and Margaret. He wanted _his_ Octavia, his mother.

“I think I want to go home now.”

John gave him a sad sort of look, twisting his mouth to the side. “Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “You probably should.” The fan sent up rows of goosebumps on his arms, and John reached out to brush a bit of hair behind Bellamy’s ear, letting his fingers linger by the shell of it. “I’m sorry, Bell. That we brought you here.”

Bellamy reached up to hold John’s hand by his ear, whose gaze flickered to the touch and watched Bellamy’s fingers stroke the back of his hand, curious, first, and then forlorn. John drew his hand away and Bellamy knew better now than to chase it. “You didn’t have anything to do with it, it was that dickhead other-Bellamy that got us into this shit.”

John snorted at that, folding his arms on the bedrail and peering up at Bellamy’s face. “You’re both dickheads.”

“Well, so are you two.”

“Who?”

“You and the other you.”

“You mean the other me that you’re co-mayor of Pound Town with?”

“The other you that I intend to marry. Yeah.”

John went a bit pink in the face at that, and slumped down in his straight-backed chair with his arms crossed. “Stop doing that.”

Bellamy flashed a brief pouting lip in mockery. “Stop invalidating our relationship from another timeline because you’re afraid to have feelings for him.”

“You know what? I’m sick of you two trying to psychoanalyze me. You’re not as clever as you think you are.”

“Then get out of your head more often so we don’t have to claw our way in.”

John seemed to mull this over, muttered something that sounded like “Touché,” and then stuck his earbuds back in as Jackson arrived at Bellamy’s other side with more pain pills and a gleeful promise that he’d be back up and running with just a few days of rest.

But Bellamy’s world couldn’t wait that long. For all its flaws, he’d never been shot in the chest there, and he needed to watch his recording of a _Secrets of Ancient Worlds_ rerun before John deleted it to make space for _Archer._ Dickhead.

(He missed him. So much.)

 

§

 

It was 11:38 PM when Bellamy realized he was losing his mind.

“Why don’t we go inside,” Murphy suggested after they had cleared the backyard up well enough and burned through the rest of the sparklers, Bellamy eventually joining in the dancing half-heartedly, much to his humiliation, and Murphy’s joy.

_“Put some heart into it, will you? You’re killing my vibe,” Murphy called out over the stereo, shoving Bellamy this way and that, twirling him around by the hand. It seemed he was trying to rattle him into being a good dancer, as if the talent was hiding somewhere inside and had to be knocked out._

_“I’m not much of a dancer,” Bellamy answered. “I usually just stay on the sidelines.”_

_“Well, that’s no way to live,” replied Murphy, drawing complicated runes of light into the air. “I bet other-me would dance with you. He probably likes dancing too. Even if we suck horrendously at it.”_

_“He does,” Bellamy said, "Like dancing, I mean. But he does suck horrendously at it, too.' He found his voice to be much softer than he’d known it. Murphy, of course, was biologically incapable of excusing this mistake._

_“God, you’re so into him,” he scoffed. Bellamy tried to look indignant._

_“And what makes you so sure?”_

_Murphy simply rolled his eyes and carried on swaying like the question wasn’t worth answering, and left Bellamy off-kilter for nearly the rest of the night._

_Until 11:38 PM, specifically._

They’d been watching something called _Scarface._ It was a favorite of Murphy’s that he hailed as a classic, and one that, to Bellamy's great amusement, he had heard about a million times from his own Murphy.

Murphy was spoiling the entire movie by warning Bellamy every time someone was about to get shot, or about to be shoved out of a helicopter, or about to do anything interesting at all. His vigilance, while annoying, was touching. Bellamy was always the protector. It was… _nice_ to have someone looking out for him over such a small thing, even if Bellamy could hardly hear what was being said in the film under Murphy’s endless stream of commentary.

Bellamy, perhaps for this reason, found himself watching Murphy more often than the movie. The light from the television screen flashed in bursts of color over the sharp planes of Murphy’s face, which peeled into a nasty little smile every time something bad was about to happen onscreen. He obediently laughed like Bellamy had never heard him laugh at most of the jokes or one-liners fed to him by the actors, apologized for crude statements that were evidently typical of the 1980s as if Bellamy’s fragile from-the-future heart would stop if he didn’t, and mouthed along with the majority of the script.

It was when he jumped up onto the couch cushions miming like he had an AR-15 and a grenade launcher in his hands, screaming _“Say hello to my little friend!”_ and pretending to blast open the double doors to Tony Montana’s mansion with a lurch and a _“BOOM!”_ that made Bellamy draw closer, sliding his hand and arm along the back of the couch.

When Murphy dropped back into his seat with a chuckle and made the sofa bounce, Bellamy’s eyes followed. A generously lit scene cast upon Murphy’s features suggested a softness to his skin and a vividness to the seawater color of his eyes that Bellamy traced. Their knees touched as he shifted nearer still. 

   Murphy had aways been good-looking, even at his most ragged, and charming, even at his most annoying. Maybe only to Bellamy, who found him endlessly entertaining where others grew weary of him. And on the occasion Murphy wore him out, too, Bellamy wondered with no hesitant imagination what it would be like to shut him up.

“Hello,” Murphy greeted in acknowledgment of the new closeness, suddenly distracted from his favorite scene. His mouth twisted into a curious little smile as Bellamy failed to respond, eyes narrowing as the other man’s stare drifted down to his mouth.

Realization dawned on his face. “Really,” Murphy intoned. “That’s what did it for you?” Bellamy moved in slow. Murphy let him.

His heart beat steadily in his chest, and stuttered once they were close enough that one, tiny, little movement would have brought their lips together. He willed himself to carry on with what he had started, and found the rest of himself unsure. He was waiting for permission, he supposed, from himself as well as Murphy. Murphy, who was still and evidently unwilling to take the reins either, and his breath came and went in warm clouds over his mouth enough times that Bellamy, dazed and with a sinking heart, drew back.

“What—?”

Murphy opened his eyes belatedly and slowly, and they glittered as if he’d won something.

“I just wanted to see what you would do,” Murphy explained, grinning and crossing his arms over his knees, having pulled them in close. “Kind of boring, actually.”

“You don’t want to—?”

“No,” said Murphy, still smiling. “I have a boyfriend, after all.”

Bellamy dragged his gaze away from Murphy’s mouth to meet his playful eyes, darting between them, feeling stunned. “I just tried to…”

Murphy said nothing. His expression spoke all.

“I’m sorry, Murphy. I don’t know why—,” he felt the back of his neck go hot and rubbed at it, and his eyes dropped with shame.

“C’mere,” Murphy demanded, and put his arm around Bellamy’s shoulders, tugging him in close. Bellamy watched bullets fly across the screen with eyes unseeing, feeling Murphy’s touch like their skin might weld together, smelling alcohol on his breath and fire on his skin. “It’s okay to want to, y’know, kiss guys.”

Wasn’t it always? Bellamy knitted his brows. “It’s not that.”

“What is it, then? Because I still don’t get it. Is it because you have a girlfriend? Is it because I’m _Murphy?”_ he asked, voice mocking _._

“Yeah,” Bellamy murmured. “Yeah, it is.”

Murphy only gave him a squeeze, resting his head on Bellamy’s shoulder. “I mean, you should probably break up with her, first, if..." Murphy trailed off, and Bellamy wondered if his attention had drifted back to the movie before Murphy spoke again, stirring against his side to sit up straighter. "Don’t you ever just do what you want? Even if it's selfish?"

Bellamy had tried to just then and been rejected, he wanted to argue. But how pathetic that would sound, complaining about a taken man refusing to kiss another taken man.

“I can’t just… it’s more complicated than that.”

“Oh,” Murphy griped. “It’s always so _complicated_ with you. You’ve lived such a deprived life, I know, but you don’t have to be a martyr about everything. I’ve seen monks less repressed than you.”

Bellamy elbowed him, and Murphy jerked away momentarily before snuggling up close again. No self-perseveration skills at all. Not his Murphy. The hedonism, though, that fit the description.

Suddenly, Murphy pulled back and leveled Bellamy with a serious look. “What do you want?” he asked firmly.

“What? What do y — ?”

“Just answer it. What do _you_ want?”

Bellamy searched his eyes, looking for the right thing to say. What did he want? What did _he_ want? Bellamy found that no one had ever really asked him what he wanted. So he’d never thought to wonder.

“Do you want him?” Murphy asked. His eyes were the same eyes that Bellamy had loved for so long.

Bellamy watched Tony Montana’s body float in the fountain, thinking of the way his heart had pounded when Murphy caressed his hand like a soft suggestion all those months ago in the prison bar before everything went to shit, and whispered, “Yeah. I… I guess I do.”

“Well, that sounds pretty simple to me.”

 

§

 

The following day when Bellamy awoke once more to the med bay ceiling, he dressed himself in the black tee left on the bedside table to replace the shirt he’d ruined, left a note of thanks on his bed, and snuck out before Jackson or any of the other healers could urge him back into bed.

He took the view in as he crossed the village one last time; the red moon sand, the bright suns already setting, the occasional flicker of the patchy radiation shield curving overhead. Then there were the people crisscrossing about in bright tunics or dark, studded things, depending on where they had come from, all nodding in acknowledgement of each other. A society where each person was vital to their survival, and knew it. So different from home.

Nova’s lab came into view around the corner of the machine shop, where Raven’s focused face was lit up by sparks in a little window. She waved, and he couldn’t see the harm in saying at least one goodbye. He trusted Raven not to send him back to bed.

“E.T.,” she greeted. “Didn’t you get shot yesterday?”

He grinned, coming up to her little window and leaning inside to peer at the motorcycle engine she was currently dissecting. The position put a bit of strain on the muscle surrounding his wound, and he lowered his arm carefully and with an unavoidable grimace. “Got to get home before John tries to do the grocery shopping. There's like eight bags of Bugles in the cabinet, I don't know why he keeps buying them. No one eats those."

Raven watched him, bewildered, and soon threw her head back in a laugh. He snickered along until she came back to him, shaking her head. “I never would have guessed.” Bellamy gave her a questioning look. “It’s hard to tell who Murphy’s really into, since he hits on just about anything that breathes. But he never really came onto Bellamy, like there was some line he wouldn’t cross with him. But now that we've met you… I guess it makes sense.”  


Bellamy frowned. "I don't follow."

   “He wants it to be real. That’s why he's been freaking out on you all week."  Raven sighed, wiping sweat from her forehead. “I think it’s hard enough for Murphy to let go of things without knowing that, in another world, he has them. That’d be hard on anybody. Don't tell him I'm pitying him, though.”

Bellamy had wanted John to go with him to Nova’s, had expected to see him there when he woke up so John could send him off and been disheartened when he found himself alone. His disappointment, however, faded with this new knowledge.

“But I think your little surprise visit has opened some eyes. The girls can’t stop gossiping about your weird relationship, you know. Even Echo thinks it’s cute.” Raven laughed. “Bellamy’s in for it when he comes home.”

Bellamy grinned, feeling warm again. “I think a push is just what he needs.”

Raven reached out and patted his hand with a thick gloved one of her own. “I hope you’re right, or else they both might die of humiliation.”

“Send me the bill,” he replied, and Raven shrugged, a brow raised. Ah, bills. Another thing they didn’t have to deal with in the future. Must be nice, when exempting the people-eating trees and such.

“Hey, Raven? Will you tell everyone I said bye? Especially him?”

“‘Course,” she answered. “Will you… will you tell Monty and Harper? And Jasper? And Luna? And Finn? And... do you know Zeke?”

Bellamy’s heart ached. “I don’t know a Zeke, but… I’ll tell the others. I promise.”

She squeezed his hand. “Good luck going through.”

“Thanks. Good luck surviving.”

“Don’t worry,” she dismissed him. “I got this.”

With a duck of his head and a smile, he made his way around the corner and rapped a fist against the laboratory door. “Nova? You in?”

The door swung open frighteningly quickly to a cheery scientist clutching a blowtorch. “My little alien!” they exclaimed. “What brings you back to the dream factory?”

They flattened themselves against the door and welcomed Bellamy in, and he stepped inside gingerly, eyes catching immediately on the empty portal. “I was hoping you’d let me stay in the lab until tomorrow, so I wouldn’t get caught out in the eclipse on my way here.”

Nova smiled, but it didn’t quite reach their eyes. Their brows were turned up in confusion. “Why would you need to come here tomorrow?”

Bellamy met their perplexed expression with one of his own. “To go through the portal? To go home?”

“Oh,” they said, and gave a small shake of their head. “No.”

Indignation bubbled up in Bellamy. “What do you mean _‘no’?”_

“The portal won’t be ready for weeks, silly. It wasn’t ready the first time you went through, that’s why you’re here now. I’m still making adjustments, still testing. You can’t go through until I’m absolutely posi- _tively_ sure it’ll be stable.”

Bellamy crossed the room in a few strides, fists curled. He didn’t mean to loom over Nova, and hadn’t intended to get angry. But he was. “I survived the first time, I’ll survive this time. I’m going through. You can’t stop me.”

“What are you going to do?” they asked challengingly, and Bellamy pushed past them to unlatch the door.

“I’m getting the council. They’ll understand that I have to go.”

“Oh,” Nova intoned again, and sighed. “I was having such a good day, too.” 

Just as he had unlatched the door, Nova used one hand to shove it closed again, and the other to sink something deep into his neck. He clapped a hand over the point of entry and turned on them, betrayed. In seconds, nothingness had crept down his torso like the rift was closing on him, wishing his body into nonexistence, until it filled up his legs and he found himself crumpled on the cold floor like a paper doll. "Why so surprised? I live with a bunch of genocidal criminals, of course I'd have a paralytic on me! It's only smart. Not that I wanted to use it on you, obviously! We're friends!" Bellamy found that hard to believe.

Nova tsk’ed as they bent over his prone form and dragged him by the ankles to the corner, heaving and groaning about his weight all the way. "But you kind of left me no choice, didn't you?" They latched a thick metal cuff on a chain around his wrist, propping him up against the wall it was hooked to. It was different from the leather ones in everyone's cottages, it was stronger, colder. “This way you can watch me work, and you won’t be so bored! You won’t be able to leave for a while, after all, since I can’t have you going off and telling on me after the eclipse ends. The council said if my inventions killed anyone else I wouldn’t be able to make any more. So, no hard feelings, I just don’t need you messing everything up for me, okay, silly?”

Bellamy tried to shout, to yank at his chains, to snarl. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do anything at all. But someone would come for him. Nova couldn’t hide him here for week; they would notice he was missing.

“You’re probably thinking, 'Surely someone will come looking for me, and then I’ll hop right into the portal and screw up all of Nova’s hard work just like I wanted! Because I’m Bellamy Blake, and I don't listen to anyone, ever!' They put their hands on their hips and peered down at him, where Bellamy lied limp. “I’ll just tell them you passed through and the other Bellamy didn’t make it out. See! I won’t even tell them he’s dead, so don't worry about anyone being sad. They’ll just think he’s having a nice little vacation. No one will even miss you!” 

  They crouched in front of him, close and wrapping their hands around the tops of their slippers, and something shifted in Nova’s eyes then. “I love science, Bellamy. I love my inventions. You won’t take that away from me just because you're bullheaded and stupid." They reached out to rap a hand on Bellamy's skull, and he didn't feel a thing. "If at any point I open that door and you scream for help, I’ll have to kill you. And that's not something I want to do.” Bellamy’s eyes were drying out from being unable to blink, and to add insult to injury, began filling with tears.

“Aw,” Nova whined as they stood up and loomed over him. “Don’t be mad at me! If you would just learn to control yourself, you wouldn’t be in half the messes you get yourself into.” They turned their back to him and brushed off their pale pink smock, pushing their goggles back down over their small eyes.

“We’ll have fun together, you and me! Just sit tight!"

Fuck, Bellamy thought. This universe wasn't very fun at all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so sorry for the long wait for this chapter. my summer classes have been totally bonkers and left me drained, i had absolutely no motivation to work on this chapter for the longest time and was not confident with anything i wrote for it, and i also got distracted by writing my murphamy mermaid fic "fish boy" that i love to death, which you can read here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19046872
> 
> i hope this chapter was enjoyable, sorry i keep torturing slash inconveniencing bellamy. final chapter coming... sometime. <3 thank you so much for reading, leave a kudos and a comment if you have the time, i Love 2 See It
> 
> come see me @slugcities on twitter for a sexy sparkler dance


	6. cyclic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> multiverses that move through time until they are drawn together again and collide, and recreate themselves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i... am so sorry. i am so sorry it took me two months to write this chapter. i have never struggled with any piece of writing so badly in all my life like i have struggled with this fic, but she's finally here.
> 
> thanks to deanoruz: the official song for this fic is superposition by the young giant because... does my nut in how well it fits. please listen sometime. the song i would suggest for this chapter is bad ideas by tessa violet :)
> 
> ok, one last ride with these four. two? four. enjoy!!! <3

 

  Of all the things Bellamy thought he might find himself doing with the old world at his fingertips, attending a “bee tour” with Murphy and an elderly hippie, rolling beeswax candles, was not at the top of the list.

   “Why is mine crooked?”

“Let me see it.”

“No you back off, Pooh Bear.”

Bellamy had no idea what that meant, but snatched his sticky hand away and made a rude gesture with it anyway. Margaret leaned over to assist an agitated Murphy in rolling another candle, and Bellamy returned his attention to his own sheet of honeycomb.

Murphy had been antagonizing him for an hour about how Bellamy had maybe opened a jar of honey in the gift shop and stuck his finger in it before purchasing it. He was sweaty from the summer heat and melting onto the little red picnic table they were sat at, and a bee on the lam seemed very infatuated with the concept of the insides of Bellamy’s ears.

   He wasn’t having a bad time.

Having successfully rolled a candle, made evident by Margaret’s cheering that would’ve made anyone but Murphy feel patronized, Bellamy’s not-boyfriend looked up and extended his candle to Bellamy. “Cute, isn’t it?”

“It looks exactly like mine.”

Murphy made a skeptical face, rolling his candle back towards him over the chipping tabletop. 

“I think the both of you are excellent craftsmen,” said Margaret, gathering and holding up the six clumsy-looking candles in front of her, comparing their heights. She reached over and tapped on Murphy’s arm. “Do you boys have any candle holders at home?”

“I don’t think so,” Bellamy answered, and knitted his brows as the other two in his company turned to give him matching looks of bewilderment. It was then that Bellamy realized he wasn’t one of the boys in question.

“Someone’s getting cozy,” Murphy teased, getting up from the table and wiping his sweaty forehead with the hem of his tank top. Margaret caught Bellamy’s gaze and crinkled to the ears.

“One day, dear. You’ll have your candle holders.”

Bellamy couldn’t be sure that the candle holders would have him back.

“Alright,” Murphy announced, “I think I’ve had enough bugs for one day. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.” As Margaret and Bellamy rose, too, from the table, Murphy linked their elbows with his and began escorting them to the car.

“Thank you boys for coming with me this afternoon. I’ve been meaning to change my outlook on bees,” said Margaret, nonsensical as usual. Murphy looked down on the small woman, fond, and helped her arrange a few jars of honey and their beeswax candles into one of the backseats once they reached the car.

Margaret was an unexpected factor in Bellamy’s understanding of not-Murphy. Murphy’s parents had passed away when he was a child in this world just as they had in the first, but Margaret seemed to be the bandaid for that wound in the way that Thelonious Jaha and Abby Griffin hadn’t been able to. Margaret— with her lemon bars and her big earrings and her voice like a prayer by the bed— seemed to soothe an ache in Murphy. The ache of a child left loveless and with lessons gone unlearned.

Bellamy felt his heart tighten as Murphy gathered Margaret’s silver hair in his hands and twirled an elastic around her ponytail, hoping to let her back breathe in the hot weather. He was so different when some of the holes were patched up.

“Earth to E.T. Get in the Batmobile before we leave your ass here.” 

In other ways, he was exactly the same.

Bellamy huffed, clambering into the backseat. “How come Margaret gets shotgun?”

“Miss Margaret always gets shotgun,” Murphy answered matter-of-factly, starting the car. Margaret giggled, and Bellamy couldn’t not smile at that. 

Paying reparations, Murphy soon rolled down Bellamy’s window, who never stopped missing fast and dangerous rides over Earth’s plains with the wind on his face. Murphy wasn’t fast, not with Miss Margaret in the car, but every slam of the breaks or trip over train tracks reminded Bellamy that his life could still end at any moment. 

   Murphy smirked in the rearview mirror at the peace that washed over Bellamy’s face as they started moving, and Bellamy rolled his eyes, still smiling.

He wouldn't mind feeling like this forever. He really wouldn't.

 

§

 

“—Maybe a fourth of an inch, and they’ll eat anything, you know. At first we thought they were just inclined to wood, but really they aren’t picky. Flesh, even —“

Bellamy rolled his head against the metal wall, damn near tears.

Did you know the Alpha tree beetle farms red sun toxin and carries the proteins in what’s basically a little poison suitcase and uses the toxin to infect trees and weaken their murder vines as the beetles feed on their wood? Bellamy did. 

He also knew about 23 other species of beetle unique to planet Alpha, its ceaselessly interesting soil makeup which was rich enough in iron to maybe be a dietary supplement if you hate yourself enough, Raven’s fascinating reproduction of Mount Weather’s post-modern volatile anesthetic and also its molecular pharmacology, whatever the _fuck_ that means, and so, so much about the stupid. Goddamn. _Portal._

The stupid goddamn portal that Bellamy might have sawed his own arm off _127 Hours_ style to get to.

For better or worse, it only took twenty-something of those hours for things to get interesting.

A knock came at the laboratory door. Bellamy straightened up, and Nova turned on him, forgoing their introduction of the first of eighteen species of scorpion to level a finger at him. “Don’t be stupid.”

They opened the door, and like a switch had been flipped, Nova brightened.

“Murphster! What brings you here!”

Bellamy felt his heart jump into his throat, and watched John give his sideways little smirk at the nickname. He liked it. Bellamy, despite the shit up to his waist, smiled too. John always was so easy to please, and so cute about every little gesture— good God, Bellamy. Save it.

“Hey, Nova,” he greeted, and tried to peek over their shoulder. Nova shifted oh-so-discreetly to block his line of sight. “Mind if I come in? Haven’t seen anyone soaking up the rays, but still, better safe than sorry.” The portal’s psychedelic waves had begun pulsing a few hours ago, signaling the beginning of the eclipse. Murphy was huffing something from a small canister and looking over his shoulder every few seconds, and held a small dagger in his hand that he’d carved his initials into.

“Sorry, pal. Working on something secret.” Nova closed the door a little bit more.

John shrugged, sliding his foot further into the doorway. “Well, you wouldn’t happen to be harboring a Bell on the run, would you?”

Bellamy knew he shouldn’t scream. That would be rash, bullheaded and stupid, which he is not.

Nova’s shoulders tensed. “I’m afraid not,” they answered. Murphy nodded, and made to turn away. 

So Bellamy screamed.

_“I’M IN HERE!”_

John stretched and leaned past Nova, brow raised. At the sight of Bellamy on a chain, his eyes widened, his mouth turning down in an angry scowl. “What the hell—?”

In a matter of seconds, Nova shot a panicked look over their shoulder, made to slam the door, thought better of it, and yanked John inside instead.

“Care to explain?!” asked John, and rushed forward to struggle with Bellamy’s chain. “Never a dull fuckin’ moment with you,” he muttered upon coming close. Bellamy let out a sigh of relief, meeting John’s eyes. John’s gaze lingered just long enough for to Nova to get close with a blowtorch, wielding it by the nozzle over his head.

Bellamy opened his mouth to warn him, and John, observant and lightning quick, dipped out of the way just as the bludgeon came down and slammed against the floor hard enough to leave a dent. Hard enough to kill John, who sat back on his hands, aghast, and then scrambled to his feet and juked them, pointing his knife at Nova’s back.

Nova panted, arms wobbling as they hefted the blowtorch up from the dent in the floor. John shook his head, standing just behind them. “It’s really too bad, Goggles,” he said, “You were one of the only ones around here who was always nice to me. Guess I should’ve known you were a mental patient.”

Nova pouted, teetering as they spun to face him. “Gee, Murphster, I’m just looking out for my best interests here. Protecting myself. Protecting my lifestyle! Surely that’s something you relate to.”

“Is that what your studies show? That I’m always looking out for myself?”

Nova shrugged. “I don’t mean to say you’re selfish. Nobody else understands you, but I do; fear is a powerful motivator.”

John tough expression faltered, for a moment, into the face of someone that had been truly seen. Then the mask went on again.

“Well, so is a wackjob with a big blowtorch,” John replied, and dashed into the backroom. The sound of him slamming the door shut and locking it echoed through the white lab.

Bellamy sank down against the wall, both relieved and disappointed. John’s skull hadn’t been pulverized, but now they were both trapped.

Maybe John would handle the scorpion tutorial better than Bellamy would. And at least he had a knife. Whether or not he knew how to use it was another story.

Nova paced, left side of the room, right side of the room, left, right, left —  “You!” they shouted. “Why would you do that, Bellamy? Look at the mess you’ve gotten us into! Now I’ll have to kill Murphy! I _like_ Murphy!”

Bellamy’s stomach twisted. He wouldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t let it happen. But the bullet hole in his chest and the cuff around his arm suggested that he might not have a choice. “Strangely I don’t feel like I’m the one at fault here.”

Nova huffed through their nose, gripping their wild hair, and then turned on him again, hefting their weapon up. “What did I tell you, stupid?”

Bellamy clenched his jaw as Nova stalked forward with the blowtorch. “Wood beetles are a fourth of an inch?”

“If you screamed,” they said, “I’d have to kill you, even if we’re friends. And what did you do?”

Bellamy didn’t answer, and Nova turned their weapon over and flicked the torch on. The hiss of the blue flame grew louder as they thrusted it into his face. “You screamed, Bellamy. You ruined everything.”

He tilted his chin up in an attempt to look braver than he felt.

Nova sighed, taking a step back. “So now _I_ have to do _what?”_

They turned the torch over and held it like a club once more, and Bellamy swallowed, opening his mouth to say something, anything, just as the backroom door flew open and banged against the wall.

“GET _FUCKED!”_ John threw a canister overhead that landed at Nova’s feet, and slung something black that landed in front of Bellamy’s. A gas mask.

Nova, recognizing the canister, abandoned the blowtorch and scrabbled toward the mask at Bellamy’s feet. Bellamy trapped it under his sneaker and yanked it towards him just as they dove for it. He shoved it over his face and fought Nova off one-handed long enough for some kind of red smoke to hiss out of the canister and make clouds up to their chins, and higher still.

“Don’t…” Nova panted, wobbling, as their hands slipped away from his mask. “Don’t do this…” Their eyes rolled back, and they hit the floor. It was over faster than it began even as the red clouds filled the room.

“Not bad for a court jester, huh?” asked John, emerging from the smoke. His voice was muffled and buzzing through the gas mask’s mouthpiece. Bellamy could’ve picked him up and spun him around, and after John fished a key out of Nova’s lab coat pocket and freed him from his cuff, he did just that.

John laughed uproariously while he was in the air, and then shoved himself away from Bellamy the moment his feet hit the floor, shoulders hiked. “Alright,” he chuckled, breathless. “Cool your jets, big guy. Wouldn’t say me versus the little lab rat was much of a fight.”

“That was amazing,” said Bellamy, gripping John by the shoulders and shaking him. “John, you saved me. You outsmarted a _genius._ That was incredible. You're incredible.”

“Seriously, it wasn’t that special,” John argued, leaning back as if bewildered by Bellamy’s chattering. “I save your ass all the time.”

“God, you’re just— I could just—“ Bellamy lurched forward, and jerked back again after the filter cartridges protruding from their masks knocked together.

“What— What did you just try to do?“

Bellamy didn’t answer, and John stood still for a moment, his expression hidden by the mask. Just as soon as Bellamy had thought to open his mouth and apologize, worried he’d crossed a line, John’s shoulders began to shake.

He was laughing, silent and hard, and wrapped his arms around himself as Bellamy smiled behind the dark glass. He loved him. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t quite the same John he’d spent all these years loving. He was still John, through and through, laughing at Bellamy for trying to kiss him with their gas masks on, and Bellamy loved him.

“I love you.”

John’s giggling hiccuped, and slowed to nothing.

“You’re John, and I’m Bellamy. And I love you,” said Bellamy. “I know he loves you. I know he does. He has to, because I do.”

John didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled something out, held it in a closed fist.

“We aren’t like you and John,” he said, and his voice crept over Bellamy soft and blue as the shore. “I’m sorry. But I hope you two…” He swallowed. “I’m happy for you.”

He took Bellamy’s hand and emptied his fist into it. When he drew away, Bellamy looked down at what John had left in his palm, and a knot tied itself up in his throat and tears sprung to his eyes.  “John—“

“Go,” he said, giving Bellamy a little push toward the portal. “Go home.”

Bellamy turned, fist curled tight, and yanked John into a hug. John, who stood frozen, and then slowly lowered his hands to rub them over Bellamy’s back.

“Hey, John?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

   “What’s your favorite movie?”

“Um, the one where the drug lord dies in the fountain at the end?” John answered, voice breaking. “Why?” Bellamy just smiled, tipping his head against John’s, and John squeezed him, fingers curling against Bellamy’s spine. “I actually liked you, you know,” whispered Murphy.

“I know,” Bellamy answered. “I liked you too.” 

“Yeah, I noticed,” John scoffed. “Now get out of here, seriously.”

Bellamy untangled himself from John and brushed a thumb over the back of his pale hand, who reached out with the other as if to grab Bellamy and make him stay. His fingers curled in midair and he pulled his hand back again, holding his arm to his own chest.

“See you in another life?” said Bellamy.

“Good riddance,” John replied, a wet laugh in his voice.

Then Bellamy let go, and tipped backwards into the violet.

 

§

 

They’d pulled over so Murphy could take a piss, and Bellamy stood with Margaret on a hillside. The sun was low in the sky but not quite setting, only dimming the world and casting a golden haze over everything: the tall dry grass climbing from the crumbling country road into the valley, the wire between old fence posts lining a pasture nearby, the shiny sides of Margaret’s big earrings, Murphy’s sweaty hair.

“Oh dear,” said Margaret. “I think I’ve been staring at the sun too long.”

Purple spots danced in front of Bellamy’s eyes, and he squinted. “Huh. Me too.”

The spots grew. And grew. And grew.

The two of them stood in silence as the spots meshed together, warped and pulsed as one, and steadily expanded as if being stretched.

“Holy shit,” shouted Murphy from down the hill, zipping up his pants. “E.T., I think that’s your ride!”

Then a head popped out, and Margaret screamed. The gas mask wasn’t helping.

Murphy was scrambling up the hill on his hands and knees as Margaret continued screaming, and Bellamy, well, Bellamy was sinking.

Margaret noticed first when she reached out for his arm and grabbed air, and fell to her knees, folding her skirt up under her and taking Bellamy by the hand.

“You can’t keep me, Margaret,” he said. She laughed, her hazel eyes wide with fear and wonder.

“I wish more than anything that I could, dear.” She squeezed his hand, and, great, Bellamy was already tearing up. “But you are a lovely thing, and those unfortunate people of yours need you more than I do.”

She leaned down and left a kiss somewhere in his curls, and when Bellamy picked his head up again he was halfway in the ground, and the man with the gas mask had thrown the mask off and was hanging upside down in the sky, staring at him with a matching set of brown eyes. Bellamy couldn’t look away, not until Murphy made it to the top of the hill, reaching out for him.

No, not for Bellamy. _His_ Bellamy.

“Fuck, oh my God, oh my fuck,” Murphy cursed, holding onto the other Bellamy’s dangling arms, pulling him from the sky.

And Bellamy, with little more than his shoulders still featured in this universe, watching them cling onto each other, felt sad in a way that he had never felt sad before.

Murphy wouldn’t have time to say goodbye if he didn’t do it then. If he even wanted to.

It was up to Bellamy’s chin, the buzzing, the swirling, the numbness. 

He’d miss this world. He really, really would.

Just as the other Bellamy fell at last from the portal and Murphy broke his fall, the two of them collected themselves just enough to look Bellamy’s way. Murphy dove, reaching out and grabbing the only thing he could get his hands on, framing Bellamy’s face and looking wildly into his eyes, giddy, disbelieving, everything-you-know-about-the-world-falling-apart-crazy. 

“Go get him, tiger,” he said, touching his forehead to Bellamy’s.

And Bellamy, hopeless, hopeless Bellamy, up to his eyes in violet, didn’t say a word. 

He’d miss it all so much.

 

§

 

Bellamy’s knees hit the lab floor hard. The air had a pinkish tinge to it, and the portal was shorting out behind him, sparkling and making a number horrible noises. Bellamy ignored it.

There was a gas mask on the floor by the portal, with a note resting on it. The handwriting was scraggly and bold.  **“PUT ON.”** So he did.

   A canister of knockout gas and a blowtorch had been left abandoned on the floor, as well as an unconscious Nova, who was chained to the wall.

Bellamy got up to investigate, and found another note lying just out of their reach.  **“NOVA NUTS. DONT UNLOK.”**

Bellamy smiled. Murphy. _His_ Murphy.

His Murphy, who was nowhere to be seen.

Bellamy moved to the periscope in the wall and saw a few people moving quickly from the cookhouse to the cottages with large weapons and anti-toxin inhalers, but no dead Murphy corpse, and no stragglers running wild on red sun.

He found Nova’s eclipse food stash and water jugs in a cabinet under one of the long, white countertops in the main room, each food box containing very weird, meticulously selected and curiously arranged food that Bellamy wasn’t looking forward to. He opened one up and slumped down against the counter, picking at carrot slices cut very particularly into squares.

There was only one cook with enough free time to bother doing this for Nova and their peculiarities, and Bellamy pulled his knees in and brought the tin box of square carrots close to his chest, staring at their corners, thinking of Murphy.

He imagined he wouldn’t stop thinking about Murphy for a while, especially with nothing else to do in this lab for the next two days.

It would’ve been nice to have a pair of arms to crawl out of the sky into, but he and Murphy weren’t _them._

They never would be.

No matter how much Bellamy thought about it.

And oh, did he think about it.

§

 

Kneeling by the side of the road as the sun went down, Bellamy held John’s hands at the top of the yellow hill. Margaret was sat next to the place where the other Bellamy had been eaten up by the ground, pressing her palm into the barren circle, now burnt from the energy of the portal. Evidence of his coming, his staying, his going. Evidence that they weren’t crazy. Evidence that it had all really happened. 

Evidence that it could happen again.

John was chattering endlessly about the week’s events, and Bellamy hated to interrupt him, but there was something he had to do before there was any chance of one of them disappearing again. Not to mention his brush with death, which was kind of the cherry on top of the hurry the fuck up sundae.

“Hey, John?”

“—Picked out _butter_ flavor— yeah?”

“I figure this week has already been weird enough,” he murmured, digging around in his pants pocket. “Going to another dimension and finding out that we’re just as much of a mess there too, being thrown into a world where I don’t have you; all of you. So before I get teleported to Universe #43 where it’s 500-something A.D. and I’m a knight and you’re a viking and we’re star-crossed lovers who have to rendezvous in secret—“

“Like you wouldn’t love that.”  


“—I gotta ask. John Murphy,” he said, and unfurled his fist. In his palm sat two rings crafted from repurposed metal; one red, the other blue. On the inside of the red ring a messy engraving read _“every”_ and on the inside of the blue ring, _“univurse."_

“Will you marry me?”

John tackled him at the same time as Margaret squealed, loud enough to echo across the hillside. Bellamy laughed wildly as John peppered endless kisses on his every freckle to the point of smothering him. "Yes," John whispered. "Yes! Fuckin'— obviously!" John went back to kissing him like they were dying, and Bellamy couldn’t for the life of him remember why they hadn’t gotten around to this sooner.

   "I love you," said Bellamy, and John kissed him long and hard.

   "I love you too. _Goddamn_ I love you too."

   Once John had gotten his fill of staring and kissing and staring and kissing, he flopped down next to Bellamy and fished the rings out of the grass, holding them up to what was left of the sun.

“Wow," he said. "These are hideous. You even spelled ‘universe’ wrong.”

Bellamy snatched the hideous blue one away, sliding it onto his finger.

“Well I'll be," said Margaret, lying next to John in the grass and taking the red one to examine it for herself. “Isn't this  _your_ handwriting, John?”

“What? I would never— give me that.”

As John and Margaret launched into an argument about John's penmanship, he still lay holding Bellamy’s hand tight enough that if another portal came for him, John would be coming along whether the multiverse liked it or not. 

Bellamy watched the daytime roll into dark blue overhead, eyed the moon making itself scarce in the evening sky, and hoped, wherever they were, that Bellamy Blake and John Murphy of Alpha Moon, 2280, could have this too.

He had all the faith the world that they would. Or at least, something close.

 

§

 

When the eclipse ended, Murphy filed a report with the council that Nova was too poor of a liar to counter in their makeshift court. Nova was exiled and returned to Sanctum and the lab went to Raven, who was only mildly perturbed about the loss of her crush, presumably after the last four had gone so much worse.

While Murphy filed his report and spoke at Nova’s trial a week ago, he avoided Bellamy like the plague, and Bellamy hadn’t seen the man since.

Oh, and Echo dumped him. 

Apparently the other Bellamy had some big ideas of his own and wasn’t afraid to share them. And Bellamy couldn’t say he didn’t share those ideas. Unrealistic as they were starting to seem.

He’d gone to the cookhouse and came up empty. (They’d dock Murphy’s rations for that.) He’d gone to Murphy’s cottage and been left standing dumb on the porch. He’d all but vanished.

“We broke up again, so I wouldn’t know,” Emori said without looking up, tinkering in the machine shop. “He’ll turn up. Has to eat eventually. And you know he likes his hidey-holes.”

So Bellamy packed up a basket of food, stood on his porch, and tried to put himself in Murphy’s boots. If he were Murphy, where would he hide?  Somewhere nice, with something to pass the time. Somewhere he could sleep. Somewhere far, far away.

So Bellamy trekked to the edge of the dome, and in a leap of faith that he’d find the nightblood, who could pass through and let him back inside again, turned off the barrier and stepped out into the world and began his search.

Two miles in, cattails swayed around the edge of a pond whose water shimmered under the suns. The air was thick and muggy with summer, filled with the chirping of frogs and insects, and underneath a weeping willow, Murphy laid half in the sun, eyes closed.

Bellamy approached quietly as he was wont to do with Murphy, and sat the basket down underneath the shade of the tree. He shucked off his socks and shoes, rolled his pants up to the ankles, and submerged his feet in the pond with a small splash. It would be just enough to wake the notoriously light sleeper, but in a way that kept Bellamy from being attacked, he hoped.

“You’re trespassing, you know.”

Bellamy smiled, wiggling his toes in the murky water. “You should’ve put up a sign.”

Murphy joined him with a sigh, chucking his boots and socks over his shoulder. He rubbed his eyes with his fists and then rested his head on his knees, groggy in the afternoon. “You come all the way out here to bother me?”

Bellamy picked at the grass. “You’ve been slippery. Wanted to see you.”

   Murphy huffed. “Ever think maybe I didn’t wanna see _you?”_

Bellamy remembered everything not-Murphy told him. About closing up. Lashing out.

“I’ll leave if you really don’t wanna hang out. I just— I missed you, Murph."

“You were with me all week,” he muttered, digging a hole in the mud with his heel.

“Not really,” Bellamy replied, “Not with  _you.”_

Murphy huffed a laugh that didn’t sound all that amused. “I’ve heard he’s real treat, the other me. Damn shame you got stuck with this version, huh?” He quirked a sideways grin at Bellamy, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“I like this version,” said Bellamy, followed by praying he wasn’t coming on too strong when Murphy stared at his own feet for a troublingly long time, then. 

“What’s in the basket?" he said at last, changing the subject. "You gonna try to stuff me in there and make me come back home? ‘Cause I won’t fit.”

“No, I know better than to try to make you do anything. You can stay out here until you’re sunburnt to your pasty heart’s content, just figured you might be hungry.”

“You… packed a picnic?”

Bellamy shrugged, moving up the bank to sit under the willow tree, who waved its wiry arms overhead and brushed its own leaves together to a slow rhythm. “Why not.”

Murphy turned by the edge of the lake, dirtying more of his pants. He had a real, lopsided smile on his face that he only wore when Bellamy did something stupid. “Did you bring a little checkered blanket? Because I won’t eat unless you brought a little checkered blanket.”

“No checkered blanket, but I did bring baked apples.”

Murphy turned away, looking out over the pond.

“I know they're your favorite,” said Bellamy, “So you should just get up here before they get all mushy or I eat them all. Whichever comes first.”

“You play dirty, Blake,” Murphy replied, brushing off his hands and coming to sit cross-legged under the tree. He snatched the can of baked apples out of Bellamy’s hands, but didn’t take long to spoon out a hefty serving for Bellamy.

“Thanks."

“I can’t eat while you’re talking.”

“I’m not —“  Bellamy started, and trailed off into a grumble as he noticed the grin on Murphy’s face.

They ate in silence, Bellamy slowly, and Murphy like he hadn’t eaten in days. A small kind of bird Bellamy had never seen before landed on the bank and toddled around aimlessly for a while, until Murphy reached into the picnic basket and started flinging bits of cheese at it.

Bellamy watched him, the way the breeze pushed his spiky hair around, the strawberry glow across his cheeks and nose from too much sun, the blue eyes holding their own, despite knowing Bellamy was watching him. 

   Bellamy kind of wanted to look at him forever, and at this realization, his mouth opened of its own accord.

“I think I have… _feelings_.”

Murphy paused, lowering half a slice of cheese to his lap. "Well, yeah."

“What?”

“Most people have those. First time around the block?"

Bellamy sighed, thunking his head against the tree. “Please don’t make this any harder than it already is. I’m trying to… to tell you something, here.”

“Like, what kind of feelings? Anger? Nausea? There are all kinds of feelings—“

“ _No,”_ Bellamy groaned, covering his face with his hands. “I mean feelings like— damn it— _happiness,_ and… and, affection, and care and love, and stuff." Murphy stared at him blankly, and Bellamy lowered his hands to look at him fully. "For you. I have feelings for _you."_

Murphy blinked. “You have about ten seconds to admit you’re fucking around, before I shove this picnic basket up a place where the apples are really gonna get mushy.”

“I’m not—“ Bellamy started, before cutting himself off with a huff. "You know what?”

_“What?_ ” Murphy snapped, suddenly red to the ears and looking panicked.

“Obviously I’m just gonna have to show you, so shut up and close your eyes.”

   The brunet scoffed. “Why? So you can steal my boots and run away? Draw a dick on my forehead? C’mon then, funny guy,” he said, shutting his eyes and throwing up his hands. “Do your worst.”

So Bellamy did.

   He kissed Murphy slow under the willow tree, one hand on his jaw and the other curled in the grass at Murphy’s hip. He tasted like baked apples, and felt like something Bellamy had been thinking about for a technical hundred and thirty-two years.

Murphy’s eyes opened slowly and they stared at one another, close, the closest they’d ever been. “Believe me now?”

“You make a compelling argument,” Murphy breathed, searching Bellamy’s eyes. “Though I might need a little more convincing. I think tongue would really solidify my verdict.”  


Bellamy shoved Murphy who laughed, a bright and honest sound like Bellamy had never heard from him before.

“I guess I have... some  _feelings_ for you too," Murphy murmured, smiling at the ground.

   "Is it just because I brought you baked apples?"

   "Absolutely."

    Bellamy wanted to kiss him again. And again. And again. For a really long time.

“Well, if you have feelings, and I have feelings... Do you think we could,  you know, be together? You and me? Could we just— try?”

   "Never seen you so flustered, Bell," Murphy teased. "What, no speech about how we're together in another universe and have the ultimate proof of concept? Or even about how we have too much left unsaid and that this is a bad, impulsive idea brought on by some kind of shared hallucination of each other from other universes?"

  Bellamy shook his head, afraid to say anything else incriminating, and Murphy grabbed Bellamy’s hand and tangled their fingers together. Their knuckles rested in the warm grass while the sun beat down on their bare feet poking out from under the tree's shadow, and it reminded Bellamy of when they'd first met; a hot, sunny day spent soaking up so much new.

   "Yeah," answered Murphy, quietly enough not to shatter the dream. "We could try. Whatever the hell you want." And Bellamy couldn't for the life of him remember why they hadn't gotten around to this sooner.

   They’d fuss and they’d argue, Murphy would lash out and Bellamy would get self-righteous, but mostly they’d be happy. Mostly, they’d do as the universe intended.

    Just past the bend of cattails around the edge of the pond, something stirred. A green eye peered through the tall grass.

    "What's that?"

    Bellamy felt his face split into a grin as a black cat emerged from the weeds, staring them down with the one eye she had left.

    "Just don't move," he said, and before long, the cat had melted into Murphy's lap. His hands hovered over the animal unsure for a moment, but she didn't stir as he lowered them to her fur and kept them there, warm and still.

   "I think I'll name it Pondcat," said Murphy.

   And, well, close enough.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i miss them already.
> 
> again, i struggled a lot with this story and this final chapter especially. i wanted to do so much and give so much, and everything, like this fic, got very tangled up. i hope this ending was everything you wanted, and if it's not, feel free to take me out back and shoot me for wasting so much of your time SFJSKF
> 
> love you all for all of your support of this fic. it's been fun!!! :) kind of a nightmare, but fun!!
> 
> leave a kudos if you'd like and please let me know what you thought in the comments, feedback is m m . scrumptious.
> 
> come get your own cat clone @slugcities on twitter


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